The influence of Drudge

Matt Drudge in a hat

When a story is 'Drudged' – carried on the Drudge Report website – its level of hits will increase several times:

  • The Drudge Report is one of the top 500 websites.
  • Founded in 1995 based on entertainment news but switched to politics.
  • Run by Matt Drudge.
  • Required reading for journalists and politicians in the US.
The Drudge Report came to prominence on 17 January 1998 when it broke the story that Bill Clinton had been having an affair with a White House trainee, Monica Lewinsky.

Other Drudge scoops include:

  • Photos of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama wearing a turban and Somali robes.
  • In February 2008, news of Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan was kept secret because of a news blackout deal agreed across the UK media, but the blackout was broken first by an Australian magazine – which no-one noticed until the sttory was picked up by Drudge.

In 1998, Brill's Content, a US magazine that adopted a critical vieew of media butt cloed in 2001, reckoned that of 51 stories the site claimed as exclusives (Jan-Sept 1998), 31 were actually exclusive stories. Of those:

  • 10 were untrue
  • 11 were true
  • 10 were of debatable accuracy

The next page explores fighting off the lawyers ...


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