THE US REPORT

Commentary by Kay B. Day

Criticizing established media brands like The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as long-time TV networks, is in full swing these days. So turnabout is fair play.  Chuck Todd, head White House correspondent for NBC News, had a few things to say about new media, with particular emphasis on Matt Drudge’s go-to website where many of us pop in throughout the day to see what’s interesting in the world around us.

Matt Drudge has carved a place for himself in media history whether old branded media likes it or not.In an interview with Tommy Christopher at Mediaite, Todd bemoaned ‘Drudge-driven’ journalism. He criticized stories based on “an opinion article allegation, not even a factually based story, that suddenly draws a question because Drudge linked to it.”

Drudge will certainly do the trick when a story runs around frantically looking for legs. For Todd, that is not a good thing. He said, “There’s no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge linked to it.”

In the interest of fairness to the man who is probably our favorite new media success story, Drudge links to content primarily run in old branded media (OBM). He services the reader by letting a story shine a little longer than it would if it sat on the NYT or WaPo site all by itself for a few days (wire services using those papers’ content aside.)

Dodd might ask himself and his colleagues why readers are turning to new media. Here are a few stories old branded media has failed to cover properly although the information is useful to American voters:

• The John Edwards scandal complete with sex, campaign titillations and DNA. The National Enquirer broke that story perhaps because old branded media was busy fawning over then Senator Barack Obama and integrity-promising Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
• The global warming bubble. OBM has yet to conduct any real investigation of the claims that have enriched failed presidential candidate and former VP Al Gore. What OBM is best at is blaming all natural phenomena on global warming. If the birds don’t sing quite as cheerfully, it must be global warming. Let a bunch of fundamentalist Christians cry ‘Armageddon,’ and OBM calls them loons. Let Al Gore and his disciples cry ‘Armageddon’ and the federal government gives them billions in grants.
• The healthcare reform hoax. Based on content in HR 3200, we’re comfortable in our projection Americans will be shell shocked when they see what the final so-called ‘reform’ brings to Main Street. Do what the most of the representatives you pay to do didn’t do: go read the bill.
• The Democrat integrity hoax: That’s an easy one. Spitzer, Paterson, Rangel, Jefferson, Dodd, and Mahoney are just  a few whose stories speak to Pelosi’s promises of change and integrity after her Democrat Party took the house in 2006.
• The Cap and Raid (HR 2454) hoax. Wait ‘til you see what that one will cost us. See ‘global warming bubble’ above.
• The murderer’s always a rightwinger hoax. We direct you to Red State for perspective on why murderers must ALWAYS be rightwingers even if they aren’t: Murder as Politics: An Inconvenient Truth.

Todd’s claims about opinion articles becoming big stories is a summary of news since the industry began. Perhaps he was asleep at the laptop when Alaska governor Sarah Palin was assaulted by all those leftwing blogs whose rumors took on new life in the OBM Todd appears to still believe has integrity. For a final example, check out MSNBC and see what programs are listed as “News.”

Give me a drop of Drudge with my coffee every morning and with my afternoon tea. I can’t remember the last time I tuned into NBC for anything, much less the news. Apparently most of my fellow Main Streeters agree with my views about OBM; a Pew poll found only 29 percent of us believe news organizations get the facts straight.