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How the Drudge Report ushered in the age of Trump

Twenty years ago, Matt Drudge’s reports on the Lewinsky affair nearly brought down Bill Clinton. He was seen as the wellspring of a new, hyper-aggressive American conservatism – but has he been outflanked by his imitators?

A t precisely 9.32pm and two seconds by his Californian clock, Matt Drudge hit the send button on his home computer and changed the world. It was Saturday 17 January 1998, beyond midnight in Washington where President Clinton had no idea what was about to hit him.

“NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN; BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT”

The headline was posted in such small print that, were it not for the capital letters, a reader might have mistaken it for a dispatch on corn prices rather than an avalanche that would propel Bill Clinton all the way to impeachment. But then, Drudge never has run with the typographical crowd.

Two hours later, he followed up with a longer post in which he elaborated that Newsweek had spiked a story from its then investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Had it been published, Drudge said, the story would have revealed that a young, still anonymous female intern had been a “frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office” where she developed a sexual relationship with the president.

The next day the Drudge Report published her name: Monica Lewinsky.

The storm unleashed that Saturday night was all the more potent for coming from a single individual operating out of a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood where he lived with a cat named Cat, three TVs, three computers, a satellite dish and a police scanner. Not long before, he had been selling T-shirts in a gift shop at CBS Studios .

Twenty years later, we can now see that Drudge, 51, sparked a revolution – a double one at that. Politically, his Lewinsky scoops heralded a new kind of American conservatism that was devil-may-care, iconoclastic, hyper-aggressive and populist. If that sounds familiar, given the fireworks bursting daily out of today’s White House, then that is no coincidence.

“Looking back, he was the beginning of a cultural revolution which we are still in the midst of right now,” says David Horowitz, a conservative writer who helped to bail out Drudge shortly before the Lewinsky affair broke. At the time Drudge was fighting a $30m lawsuit against the Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, whom he had falsely accused of abusing his wife – one of the earliest examples in the internet age of rightwing fake news.

The second revolution Drudge sparked was within the media. By exposing not just the president’s tryst with an intern, but the decision by Newsweek to hold off on the story, he planted a bomb under both the presidency and the mainstream media. “Matt Drudge broke the fraternity of the guardians of the culture,” Horowitz says.

The “fraternity” was aghast at Drudge’s rise. CBS’s Face the Nation refused to sully itself by having Drudge on air. When NBC did extend an invitation, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, scoffed: “The notion of a cyber gossip sitting on Meet the Press would have been unthinkable!” Drudge lapped up the opprobrium, trolling his critics with the comment: “I’m not a journalist, I’m a kangaroo.”

Despite the brickbats, Drudge rapidly attracted a large readership with his gregarious mix of aggregated Beltway and Hollywood gossip, news stories drawn from outlets spanning the political range, and headlines that were clickbait before the term had been coined. “There’s a new sex droid in town”, was one of his recent headlines.

Where readers flocked, news editors followed with tails between legs. A skim of the Drudge headlines became an essential start to any TV, press or radio editors’ day, helping to define what was shaping up to be the 24-hour news cycle. And with no legacy overheads and a lean staff, Drudge was soon raking in the money, the proceeds of which he enjoys today in his 10-acre property outside Miami where he moved in the wake of the Lewinsky furore.

While the readership has always leaned heavily male and conservative, his devoted fans include unexpected figures, such as feminist intellectual Camille Paglia. She was one of the first established voices to break ranks and endorse the site at a time when it was still being almost universally derided.

“I saw in Matt Drudge the triumph of the populist tabloids,” says Paglia. “It’s amazing how no one, in all these decades, has been able to imitate, displace, or supplant Drudge – because he is a true American original.”

Paglia is right: it is amazing that the Drudge Report continues to enjoy the influence it does. The point-size of its banner headline has crept up a bit, but otherwise the layout of the site is virtually unchanged from the original design, as though it were stuck in time.

According to analytics company comScore, the Drudge Report had 2.5 million unique visitors in November. That reach is amplified when you consider the strong engagement of readers who tend to return frequently, producing a total 292m page views that month.

While the Drudge Report is a rightwing site true to the libertarian, small government, anti-abortion , climate change-denying world view of its creator, its impact is felt much more widely. When the Guardian – not a natural Drudge ally – broke the story of Steve Bannon’s incendiary remarks in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury this month, fully a quarter of the vast traffic it generated came through Drudge.

Over the past 20 years, the rightwing megaphone has grown far more sophisticated. Savage Nation (1994), Fox News (1996), InfoWars (1999) and Breitbart (2005) – which was started by Drudge’s first assistant, Andrew Breitbart – have all matured in line with the Drudge Report (1995). But instead of threatening his supremacy, they have provided political ballast to his idiosyncrasies.

Drudge is “the wellspring for the conservative media ecosystem”, wrote the Republican strategist Rick Wilson in the Daily Beast .

The threat to the Drudge Report has come, paradoxically, not so much from rightwing competitors but from the very source of his own success – individualised news born of the internet. When he sent out his first newsletter via email to friends, he issued a genuinely personal take on current affairs, an independent act of defiance that appealed to his libertarian values.

That act has spawned countless imitators, but instead of being truly individualised, they are corralled through the modern monoliths Facebook and Twitter. The development has left Drudge baffled and bemused, judging from recent remarks of this increasingly reclusive man.

In October 2015, Drudge, who now rarely allows himself to be seen or heard in public and who did not respond to a Guardian request for interview, turned up unexpectedly in the Austin, Texas studios of Alex Jones’s InfoWars. He remained unseen and behind camera, but did speak passionately for several minutes.

“Twenty years. I’ve had a hell of a run,” Drudge said to Jones from the shadows, clearly feeling nostalgic. Then he got down to business.

“I don’t do the socials,” he said with a telling linguistic awkwardness. “I’m not on Facebook. I’ve got the Twitter thing, but even that’s disgusting.”

The shift has been stealthy but seismic. The Drudge Report’s legendary ability to dictate the news cycle has been stolen by Twitter, where editors – instead of having to rely on Drudge’s judgment – can exercise their own. “You used to see something go up on Drudge and hear it on cable news an hour later – now it’s all moved over to the Twittersphere,” Wilson says.

That trend was temporarily abated during 2016 when the site enjoyed a revival as cheerleader-in-chief for Donald Trump. As Politico put it, Drudge went “all in on Trump”. He reserved his banner headlines for Trump-friendly subjects such as immigration and trade, while running attack stories on contesting Republican candidates such as Ted Cruz . After Trump won his party’s nomination, Drudge provided the same service in the general election, mocking Hillary Clinton as a “brain in a jar” and accusing the rest of the media of covering-up her hypothyroidism .

Much as a Trump victory was palpably desired by Drudge, you have to wonder whether he will come to regret the outcome, in the manner of Frankenstein and his monster.

Dylan Byers, CNN’s senior reporter on media and politics, points out that, by giving Trump a leg-up into the White House, he has helped to create a media phenomenon that is far more powerful than any Drudge Report. “For 20 years, Drudge set the gold standard for gossip, sensationalism and trolling, making him one of the most influential figures in political media,” Byers says. “But Trump is sui generis. He is his own media outlet. He does his own trolling and creates his own sensationalism. The controversies Trump creates with one tweet make Drudge’s entire homepage feel uninspired.”

Uninspired. That’s a word seldom attached to Matt Drudge. But nothing is safe in the Trump era, it seems. Not even the wellspring of conservative media.

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Drudge Report, a Trump Ally in 2016, Stops Boosting Him for 2020

A rift between the president and the online news pioneer Matt Drudge is playing out in pithy headlines and needling tweets as the campaign heats up.

By Tiffany Hsu

Something has changed at Drudge Report, the influential site known for its tabloid-poetry headlines and conservative take on the news, and don’t think the president hasn’t noticed.

Matt Drudge, a web pioneer who went live with his site in 1995, was seen as an important media champion of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign. “A large measure of why Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge,” Carl Bernstein said four years ago. And Mr. Trump has expressed his appreciation for the fedora-wearing web journalist, calling him “a great gentleman.”

But nowadays, like CNN, The New York Times and many other outlets, Drudge Report is just one more purveyor of “fake news,” in the Trump view.

For anyone who had not stopped by the site since it developed a reputation for lifting Mr. Trump and his brand of conservatism, the welcome page on Monday made for an arresting sight. At the top were images of stickers being sold by the Biden-Harris campaign that read, “I paid more income taxes than Donald Trump.” Below that appeared a scroll of headlines linking to news stories from various sites, all of them written in Mr. Drudge’s staccato style, many of them related to a New York Times investigation of Mr. Trump’s troubled financial history.

“LOST MORE MONEY THAN MADE? … FINANCED EXTRAVAGANT LIFESTYLE WITH USE OF BUSINESS EXPENSES … FAKE BILLIONAIRE? … CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE: TRUMP OWES $421M.”

Mr. Drudge also did not pull any punches after Tuesday’s presidential debate: “Chaos reigns in hell debate … Undecided voters describe President as a ‘crackhead,’ ‘arrogant’ in focus group … Joe faces down raging Don.”

It was a notable shift from four years ago, when Mr. Drudge heralded Mr. Trump’s “rock star welcome in Florida” and highlighted stories that cast doubt on the health of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. His site, back then, also included links to coverage of Trump rallies as they happened.

Cracks started to appear in the summer of 2019, when Drudge Report featured a headline about the slow progress on a barrier Mr. Trump had repeatedly pledged to build along the southern border with Mexico: “ NO NEW WALL AT ALL! ” In December, when the House of Representatives impeached the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the site went big once again: “ TRUMP ON BRINK .”

The Washington Times, a conservative daily, noted the shift. “The Drudge Report has stoked alarm on the right for appearing to pivot on its support for President Trump,” the paper reported last November, “increasingly linking to stories that are critical of the administration and to media websites that are accused of having an anti-Trump bias such as CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.”

In December, to raise awareness of a website he had started, Dan Bongino, a conservative radio host and frequent guest on Fox News programs, wrote on Twitter : “Drudge has abandoned you. I NEVER will.”

In April this year, President Trump weighed in on Twitter : “I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others. People are dropping off like flies!” The Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson echoed the sentiment in a July episode of his show, saying that Drudge Report “has changed dramatically, 180 degrees” and calling Mr. Drudge “a man of the progressive left.”

With the presidential campaign entering its final stretch, the attacks are mounting. On Sept. 1, Mr. Trump retweeted a post from Mark Levin, the host of a conservative syndicated radio show and a Fox News program, complaining about Drudge Report’s all-caps coverage of Mr. Trump’s denial of having suffered a health crisis ( “TRUMP DENIES MINI-STROKE SENT HIM TO HOSPITAL … VIDEO: DRAGGING RIGHT LEG”). In response, Mr. Trump tweeted, “Drudge didn’t support me in 2016, and I hear he doesn’t support me now. Maybe that’s why he is doing poorly.”

Two weeks later , the president deemed Drudge Report “Fake News.” “Our people have all left Drudge,” he said on Twitter. “He is a confused MESS, has no clue what happened.”

The site has perhaps paid a price for jumping off the Trump train. It had 1.4 million unique visitors in August, down 42 percent from a year earlier, according to Comscore data provided by The Righting, which analyzes viewership of right-leaning outlets. Its audience has trailed that of the right-wing sites The Gateway Pundit and Daily Caller. New rivals looking to outdraw the once-fastest news-slinger on the web include Liberty Daily, Rantingly and NewsAmmo, The Washington Times noted.

Mr. Drudge, who rarely gives interviews, did not respond to requests for comment.

In “The Drudge Revolution,” a book published this year, the journalist Matthew Lysiak described how Mr. Drudge, the child of two liberal Democrats, started out some 25 years ago from a Hollywood apartment equipped with a dial-up connection. What began as a Sunday night online newsletter filled with musings on natural disasters and celebrities soon became a venue for scoops on media, entertainment and politics.

Its founder displayed a knack for knowing what would make readers click when he started posting links to articles plucked from the fast-growing internet. He has had many big scoops of his own over the years, but he made his name as an aggregator — a digital journalist who highlights work published elsewhere — and he moved with such speed that he often gave the impression of being first, even when he wasn’t.

When the relationship between President Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky — a story he broke — led to an impeachment in 1998, Mr. Drudge fully embraced the role of “sledgehammer to the media establishment complex,” Mr. Lysiak wrote. The site had lurid scoops on Mr. Clinton alongside curios like “ Sting says today’s rock music — is a bore! ”

Mr. Drudge “ effectively invented clickbait ,” wrote the Columbia Journalism Review. Frank Rich, writing in The Times in 1999, said he was a “grandstander whom many, I included, once feared as the Devil of journalism incarnate.”

Drudge Report attracted plenty of conservative love and attention. Mr. Drudge worked with Andrew Breitbart , who later created the right-wing news site Breitbart News , and he met Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago. In 2015, he sat off-camera for a 45-minute interview with Alex Jones , the conspiracy-theory-peddling founder of Infowars.

Mr. Lysiak, the author, said in an interview that rival websites are “licking their chops — they see blood in the water.” But he noted that there may be another factor in Drudge Report’s recent loss of traffic: the rise of social media.

“Matt Drudge was always first at everything, but not anymore, not even close — Twitter’s first,” Mr. Lysiak said. “For years now, people have been wondering who the next Drudge is, but it isn’t a person. It’s a social media revolution, and he sees that writing on the wall.”

But Mr. Drudge has a deep desire, and a talent, for staying relevant, Mr. Lysiak said. Betting big on Mr. Trump did the trick in 2016. Betting against him could work this time around.

Mr. Lysiak suggested that readers who expected Mr. Drudge’s site to stay true to one line of political thought were misguided.

“In reality, while Matt Drudge has his own personal political opinions, his website has absolutely no loyalty to any political party or ideology,” he said. “Now he’s thinking long-term, really putting his political capital on a Biden candidacy. And if that happens, he will once again weaponize his site on behalf of more conservative causes.”

Tiffany Hsu is a media reporter for the business desk, focusing on advertising and marketing. Previously, she covered breaking business news. Before joining The Times, she wrote about the California economy for The Los Angeles Times. More about Tiffany Hsu

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Did Drudge Report and Fox News turn blue in 2020?

Once seen as staunchly republican, the news site and cable news network raised eyebrows in their coverage of trump.

By Jennifer Graham

Once a reliable place to find unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton, the news aggregator Drudge Report mocked both President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani in recent weeks.

Meanwhile Fox News, long seen as a booster of conservatism, has become a target of the president, who cheers every decline in ratings and is rumored to be considering starting a media company that would compete with Fox.

Have Drudge and Fox, like voters in Georgia, turned blue, or at least faint purple?

If so, it would be a remarkable change, given that a subset of Americans called “ Fox News Republicans ” have been the president’s most loyal supporters. And as far back as 2006, the website founded by Matt Drudge has been seen as powerhouse of Republican support, with ABC News reporting that year that “Drudge Report sets the tone for national political coverage.”

It’s clear that Drudge Report is no longer a booster of Trump, who has called the website “fake news” this year although it has been credited with helping him get elected in 2016.

It’s not clear, however, if Matt Drudge is still the owner, or involved on a daily basis. There’s been speculation the site has been sold, although others say Drudge still owns and manages the site he founded in 1995.

As for Fox, the network recently changed its slogan to “ Standing Up for What’s Right ,” which some people saw as a dig at Trump, and by extension, his loyal supporters. Trump voters also took issue with the network calling states for Biden on election night.

Given their other content, it’s unlikely that Drudge Report and Fox have radically shifted to the left. As they say in medical school, “ when you hear hoofs, think horse, not zebra ,” meaning the simplest explanation is more likely than the more uncommon one.

As such, it’s more probable that the news outlets soured on Trump — as some other prominent Republicans did — not on conservatism in general.

But the perception that Drudge Report and Fox News have abandoned their base is getting oxygen from people who want to compete with them.

Drudge Report, a former Trump ally, is ready to move on. The site is filled with headlines that describe the outgoing president as "bitter" and "not a good loser.'" https://t.co/VSoJyMzWgN pic.twitter.com/SKBfNlq43H — Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) November 12, 2020

Man of the Left?

Earlier this year, Ryan McMaken, writing on the blog of the Mises Institute , said Drudge Report has lost its edge, becoming instead a purveyor of predictable fare, spiced with “crisis porn.”

“It is now, for all practical purposes, a sister site to CNN.com or The Atlantic, ” McMaken wrote.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson went farther, in July calling Drudge “a man of the progressive left.”

“At times, his site is indistinguishable from The Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company,” Carlson told Matthew Lysiak, the author of a biography on Drudge, “ The Drudge Revolution ,” released this year.

Lysiak did not interview the subject of his book. Drudge is famously reclusive and rarely grants interviews. But he did speak briefly to Florida journalist Bob Norman after he showed up unannounced at Drudge’s home.

As Norman recounted in an article in Columbia Journalism Review, he never saw Drudge when he was at the house, but called him later and told him he wanted to talk with him about Trump. “You and everybody else,” Drudge replied. When Norman said Drudge Report was supportive of Trump in 2016, Drudge said, “That was three years ago.”

“That response seemed rather telling, a clear distancing from the president. But Drudge wouldn’t go further,” Norman wrote.

In addition to Drudge Report’s increasingly frequent skewering of Trump, others have noticed the website has taken the pandemic seriously, unlike some of Trump’s supporters.

As one person wrote on Twitter, “Fox may have shifted to the center since 2016. Drudge Report was the biggest game changer. DR single-handedly made me deathly afraid of COVID-19 between February and May of this year.”

Fox News, meanwhile, has regularly enraged the president with reporting that the president believes is biased against him. At one point, he said he was the “golden goose” responsible for the network’s historic ratings. (Fox surpassed the legacy networks in primetime for the third quarter of 2020, and in that same quarter, four of the five most-watched cable news shows belonged to Fox.)

And his anger was renewed on election night after Fox News was the first network to project that eventual President-elect Joe Biden would win Arizona.

According to the political website The Hill , the Trump campaign urged people to call Fox to ask them to withdraw the call. “The campaign also sent out talking points attacking the head of the Fox News decision desk and highlighting his past contributions to Democratic candidates,” Brett Samuels wrote for The Hill.

The president has urged his supporters to abandon Fox for other conservative outlets such as Newmax, and Mike Allen at Axios has reported that Trump wants to start a digital media company to compete with Fox. According to Allen, an unidentified source said, “He plans to wreck Fox. No doubt about it.”

To do so, however, would require convincing Trump supporters to abandon their principle source of news.

According to an October report from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 40% of Republicans say they trust Fox News more than any other news source, comprising what the institute’s founder and CEO Robert P. Jones called “a party within a party.”

And those “Fox New Republicans” were largely supportive of the president.

Nearly all Republicans who report trusting most in Fox News for television news approved of the job Trump is doing in office, including 82% who strongly approve, according to the PRRI survey. (Among all other Republicans, 78% approved of the president and 42% strongly approved.)

Drudge alternative

If Trump decides to compete with what he perceives as anti-Trump media, he’ll have company. Conservative podcaster Dan Bongino is offering Trump supporters an alternative to Drudge Report in his Bongino Report , launched last year.

A news aggregator like Drudge Report, the site recently had headlines including “Biden Campaign Manager Called for Mandatory Gun Seizures” and “RINO Mitt Romney Scolds Trump for Not Accepting Election Irregularities Without Investigation.”

In announcing the launch, Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and police officer, said on Twitter, “Drudge has abandoned you. I NEVER will.”

Bongino is regularly among the top 10 performing Facebook posts on a given day, according to the Twitter account that tracks them. He’s also a regular commentator on Fox News, which shows the challenge that Trump and his supporters face if they try to extract themselves from Fox and Drudge Report, given their longtime entwinement. When Trump criticizes Fox, for example, he’s criticizing the employer of his ally Sean Hannity, a top-performing Fox host.

But a Biden presidency may be what reunites the team. Recently, Drudge Report has been publishing flattering photos of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. If the past predicts the future, that will change.

And a recent article by Sarah Ellison and Jeremy Barr in The Washington Post suggests that Fox News will soon be making Trump happy again when it casts a critical eye on the Biden administration.

“Fox thrives when it is in the opposition because they have a real-time bad guy to beat up on,” former CNN President Jonathan Klein said in the Post. “A Biden win would be great for Fox’s business.”

Drudge Report

The Drudge Report (stylized in all caps as DRUDGE REPORT ) is a U.S.-based news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge , [4] and run with the help of Charles Hurt [2] and Daniel Halper . [5] The site was generally regarded as a conservative [6] [7] [8] publication, though its ownership and political leanings have been questioned following business model changes in mid-to-late 2019. [9] The site consists mainly of links to news stories from other outlets about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists.

Political leanings

Business model and viewership decline, notable stories, monica lewinsky scandal, hillary clinton for president, swift boat veterans for truth, obama photo, prince harry in afghanistan, u.s. senate problems, controversial stories, errors and questions about sourcing, sidney blumenthal lawsuit, alleged john kerry intern scandal, alleged bill clinton illegitimate child, alleged heckling of republican senators by cnn reporter, oprah and sarah palin, ashley todd attack hoax, birther conspiracy theories, hillary clinton's 2016 campaign, conspiracy theories about the 2017 las vegas shooting, immigration, external links.

The Drudge Report originated in 1995 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. [3] It was the first news source to break the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal to the public, after Newsweek decided to "kill the story". [10]

The Drudge Report started in 1995 as a gossip column focusing on Hollywood and Washington, D.C. [11] Matt Drudge began the email-based newsletter from an apartment in Hollywood, California , using his connections with industry and media insiders to break stories, sometimes before they hit the mainstream media. In its early days Drudge maintained the website from his home in Miami Beach, Florida , with help from assistants in story selection and headline writing. His first assistant was Andrew Breitbart . [12] Breitbart, who described himself as "Matt Drudge's bitch", [13] worked the afternoon shift at the Drudge Report, [14] at the same time as running his own website, Breitbart News , which provided a conservative perspective for people in the Los Angeles entertainment industry. [15] John Ziegler has said that Drudge blocked Breitbart from posting content critical of Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign for the US presidency. [16]

In 2010, Drudge added former Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl to the Drudge Report staff. [17] In 2011, he added to the staff Charles Hurt, most recently the Washington bureau chief of the New York Post and a columnist for The Washington Times . [2] Curl, who served as morning shift editor, left the site in 2014 and, with Drudge's blessing, in January 2015 launched his own aggregator Right Read , for The Washington Times . [18]

Drudge, who began his website in 1997 as a supplement to his $ 10 per year e-mail newsletter, [19] received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole 's running mate in the 1996 US presidential election . In 1998, Drudge made national waves when he broke the news that Newsweek magazine had information on an inappropriate relationship between "a White House intern" and President Bill Clinton —the Monica Lewinsky scandal —but was withholding publication. [20] [21] [22] After Drudge's report came out, Newsweek published the story. [23]

The Drudge Report site consists mainly of selected [24] hyperlinks to news websites all over the world, each link carrying a headline written by Drudge or his editors. The linked stories are generally hosted on the external websites of mainstream media outlets. It occasionally includes stories written by Drudge himself, usually two or three paragraphs in length. They generally concern a story about to be published in a major magazine or newspaper. Drudge occasionally publishes Nielsen , Arbitron , and BookScan ratings, or early election exit polls which are otherwise not made available to the public.

In April 2009, the Associated Press announced that it would be examining the fair use doctrine, used by sites like Google and the Drudge Report to justify the use of AP content without payment. [25]

On May 4, 2009, the US Attorney General 's office issued a warning to employees in Massachusetts not to visit the Drudge Report and other sites because of malicious code contained in some of the advertising on the website. [26] In March 2010, antivirus company Avast! warned that advertising at the Drudge Report, The New York Times , Yahoo , Google , MySpace and other sites carried malware that could infect computers. "The most compromised ad delivery platforms were Yield Manager and Fimserve, but a number of smaller ad systems, including Myspace, were also found to be delivering malware on a lesser scale," said Avast Virus Labs. [27]

The site's design has seen few changes since its debut in 1997. Drudge has experimented with temporary, relatively minor design tweaks, including using all black-and-white pictures for a period in August 2017 [28] and using colored text for holidays instead of the standard black throughout the site's existence; in all cases, the basic layout remained consistent throughout its existence. [ citation needed ] It remains entirely written in unscripted HTML , with a mostly monochromatic color scheme of black boldface monospaced font text on a plain white background. The Drudge Report has been described by Cheryl Woodard, co-founder of PC , Macworld , PC World and Publish magazines, as "a big, haphazard mishmash of links and photos" [29] and by Dan Rahmel as "popular despite a plain appearance". [30] The Drudge Report website is simple and, according to Paul Armstrong of webwithoutwords.com , retro in feel. [31] Jason Fried of Basecamp called it "one of the best designed sites on the web". [32] It consists of a banner headline and a number of other selected headlines in three columns in monospaced font . Most link to an outside source, usually the online edition of a newspaper, which hosts the story. When no such source is available, either because the story is "developing", [33] with little known details at the time, or is an exclusive scoop, a special page is created on the Drudge Report servers, which contains text and sometimes images.

Stories on the site are ascribed different levels of importance, which Matt Drudge rates at his editorial discretion. The Report almost always holds one major story above the masthead logo, usually just one sentence hyperlinked to the most important story of the day. Other stories surrounding the main headline can be found in the upper left-hand side of the page and link to more specific articles dealing with aspects of the headline story. The standard story, either the headline or links below the logo, is written in black. The majority of stories are laid out in three columns beneath the masthead ; at the bottom of each column are various links: newspapers and magazines in the left column, columnists in the middle column, and a collection of wire service links and miscellaneous links to archives, e-mail, site stats, and a box to submit anonymous tips at the right. "Weather Action," a static page of links to weather data; and "Quake Sheet," with earthquake monitoring, each have their own hosted page on the Drudge Report servers. The newest stories and those Drudge considers most important are in red, all under a single major headline in large bold type. For especially important breaking stories, especially if they are still emerging, Drudge places art of a flashing red light on the screen. [34]

Although the site initially featured very few images, it is now usually illustrated with five or six photographs. Generally the images, like the linked headlines, are hotlinked from the servers of other news agencies. [ citation needed ]

Matt Drudge has said that he is a conservative , but "more of a populist ". [35] [36] Some had regarded the Drudge Report as conservative in tone, [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] and it has been referred to in the media as "a conservative news aggregator". [43] In 2008, Richard Siklos, an editor of Fortune magazine, called the Drudge Report a "conservative bullhorn". [44] Peter Wallsten, writing in the Los Angeles Times , labeled Drudge a "well-known conservative warrior"; [45] Saul Hansell, writing in The New York Times , referred to him as a "conservative muckraker"; [46] and Glenn Greenwald was quoted in New York magazine in August 2007 as calling him a "right-wing hack ". [47]

Jesse Swick of The New Republic notes that the Drudge Report frequently links to stories that cast doubt upon global warming. "[Drudge] loves a press release from Senator Inhofe almost as much as he loves taking pot shots at Al Gore ... It's like flashing tasty images of popcorn and sodas between frames at movie theaters, only much less subtle." [48] Ben Shapiro wrote, "The American left can't restrict Internet usage or ban talk radio, so it de-legitimizes these news sources. Ripping alternative news sources as illegitimate is the left's only remaining option—it cannot compete with the right wing in the new media ... They call Matt Drudge a muckraker and a yellow journalist ." [49]

A study in 2005 placed the Drudge Report "slightly left of center". [50] "One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites", said Timothy Groseclose , the head of the study. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media." [50] Professor Mark Liberman critiqued the statistical model used in this study on the basis that model assumed conservative politicians do not care about the ideological position of think tanks they cite, while liberal politicians do. [51] [52] The study was also criticized by media watchdog Spinwatch for its methodology and its authors' ties to conservative think tanks . [53]

In 2015 and 2016, Drudge repeatedly featured pro-Trump headlines during the Republican Party presidential primaries , leading Salon and Politico to describe Drudge as "all in" for Trump. [54] [55] During the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump of 2019, the Drudge Report began aggregating what CNN Business called "an overwhelming amount of negative news for the Trump White House". CNN speculated that this meant there had been a falling out. [56] In 2019, Rasmussen Reports reported that Matt Drudge had sold the site and was no longer involved in its operations, which would also explain the change in editorial direction; however, that reporting was not confirmed. [1] [57] By 2020, some prominent conservatives—including President Donald Trump —had concluded that the Drudge Report had abandoned its conservative ideology, with Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson stating, "Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left." [58] In 2020, Austrian social scientist Christian Fuchs of the University of Westminster described the Drudge Report as an alt-right website. [59]

Matt Drudge's business entity in Florida is a privately owned limited liability company called Digital, LLC. [60] [61] [62] Drudge applied for and was granted a U.S. Trademark registration for the phrase "Drudge Report" on January 15, 2019, filed on May 15, 2018. [63] [64] The registration excludes the word "Report" from protection outside of the exact two-word phrase use and is for "standard characters without claim to any particular font style, size, or color."

Revenue for the Drudge Report is driven by advertising that was managed for 20 years by Intermarkets, Inc. During the summer of 2019, after many years of being known for "changing nothing" about the website, Drudge advertising shifted to a new company by the name of Granite Cubed. The current ownership, strategy and outlook for the Drudge Report is held close as private information. [65]

In October 2019, the Drudge Report began linking to articles which were increasingly critical of Trump, reportedly the result of Drudge himself becoming "exasperated" by the president. [66] This coincided with a near 30% decrease in traffic metrics for the Drudge website in the last months of 2019 — from a 90 day-ago ranking of #637 in global internet engagement as of July to #844 in December. [67] The site's readership briefly rebounded in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic escalated, but continued to decline to new record lows as the year went on. [68]

After a Comscore data report showing a year over year decline of 38 percent from August 2019 to August 2020, President Trump tweeted, "Such an honor! Drudge is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he's bleeding profusely, and is no longer "hot". But others are! Lost ALL Trumpers." [69]

In 2006, Mark Halperin wrote that "Drudge's coverage affects the media's political coverage", effectively steering it towards what Halperin calls "the most salacious aspects of American politics". [70] In The Way To Win , a book written by Halperin and John Harris , Drudge is called "the Walter Cronkite of his era". [70] [71] Democratic Party strategist Chris Lehane also said in 2006 "phones start ringing" whenever Drudge breaks a story, and Mark McKinnon , a former media advisor to George W. Bush , said that he checked the site 30–40 times per day. [70]

Wallsten analyzed the data derived from a detailed content analysis of print, broadcast and blog discussions during the last five weeks of the 2008 campaign. Rather than the broad impact posited by professional political observers, Wallsten found that, even on issues where the site should be expected to have its largest impact, the stories highlighted on the Drudge Report exert a fairly inconsistent influence over what traditional media outlets chose to cover. Specifically, the time series analysis presented by Wallsten shows evidence of a "Drudge effect" on print and broadcast coverage for only five of the 10 political scandals that received the most attention on the Drudge Report between September 30 and November 3, 2008. [72]

Matt Drudge has been criticized by other media news personalities: Bill O'Reilly twice called Drudge a "threat to democracy" in response to Drudge disclosing his book sales figures, [73] and Keith Olbermann referred to Drudge as "an idiot with a modem". [74]

Drudge, along with his website, was labeled one of the "Top 10 anti-Barack Obama conservatives" by the US editor of The Daily Telegraph in February 2009. [75]

In addition to its media influence, the Drudge Report has influenced design elements on other sites, some with opposing viewpoints [76] and some which use the same format for listing news. A left-leaning [77] parody site called Drudge Retort was founded in 1998 as "a send-up of Mr. Drudge's breathless style". [78] [79] [80] According to online analytics data for April 2010 from the Newspaper Marketing Agency, the Drudge Report was then—now over ten years ago—the number one site referrer for all online UK commercial newspaper websites. [81]

The Drudge Report originally attained prominence when it was the first to report what came to be known as the Lewinsky scandal . It published the story on January 17, 1998, showing that Newsweek had turned down the story. [82]

In October 2007, during the early months of the Democratic primary for the 2008 presidential campaign, the Drudge Report broke a story, "Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge," and, "$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report." The New York Times said, "Within minutes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising success was injected via Drudge into the day's political news on the Internet and cable television." [83]

During the 2004 US presidential campaign, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group made claims about John Kerry 's war record, which were mentioned by Drudge and investigated by major newspapers and TV networks. [70] The book Unfit for Command: Swiftboat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry became a best-seller in part due to its promotion in the Drudge Report.

Drudge [84] published a photo of Barack Obama in Somali tribal dress on February 25, 2008, [85] and reported that the photo had been sent to him by a Clinton campaign staffer. [86] The publication of the photograph resulted in a brief war of words between the Clinton and Obama campaign organizations.

On February 28, 2008, Drudge published an article noting that Prince Harry was serving with his regiment in Afghanistan . Prince Harry was ten weeks into a front-line deployment in Afghanistan that was subject to a voluntary news blackout by the UK press. [87] The blackout was designed to protect Prince Harry and the men serving with him from being specifically targeted by the Taliban . An Australian weekly women's magazine New Idea had broken the story in January, [88] but it was not followed up at the time. The New Idea editors claimed ignorance of any news blackout. [89] Then a German newspaper Berliner Kurier published a short piece on February 28, also before Drudge. [90]

Drudge subsequently claimed the report as an exclusive. Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt , professional head of the British Army, said: "I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us". [91] The Prince's tour of duty was prematurely ended, since his unit might have been targeted by large-scale suicide attacks intended to kill the Prince. [92]

On March 9, 2010, The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms claimed that the site was "responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate...Please avoid using [this] site until the Senate resolves this issue...The Senate has been swamped the last couples [ sic ] days with this issue." The Drudge Report countered stating that "it served more than 29 million pages Monday without an e-mail complaint about 'pop ups,' or the site serving 'viruses'." [93]

Research by the media magazine Brill's Content in 1998 cast doubt on the accuracy of the majority of the "exclusives" claimed by the Drudge Report. Of the 51 stories claimed as exclusives from January to September 1998, the magazine found that 31 (61%) were truly exclusive stories. Of those, 32% were untrue, 36% were true and the remaining 32% were of debatable accuracy. [22]

In 1997, the Drudge Report reported that incoming White House assistant Sidney Blumenthal may have been perpetrating domestic violence . Drudge retracted the story the next day and apologized, saying that he was given bad information, but Blumenthal filed a $30 million libel lawsuit, Blumenthal v. Drudge , in the District of Columbia. After four years, Blumenthal dropped his lawsuit, saying that the suit had cost him tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. He agreed to pay $2,500 to Drudge's Los Angeles attorney for travel costs, claiming that Drudge was "backed by unlimited funds from political supporters who use a tax-exempt foundation." [94] [95] [96] The Individual Rights Foundation, led by conservative activist David Horowitz , paid Drudge's legal fees in the Blumenthal lawsuit. Judge Paul Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, noted in the judgment that Drudge "is not a reporter, a journalist, or a newsgatherer. He is, as he admits himself, simply a purveyor of gossip." [97]

During the 2004 presidential campaign , the Drudge Report ran a story in which general Wesley Clark claimed that the John Kerry campaign would implode over an intern affair. The Drudge Report reported that other news outlets were investigating the alleged affair, but removed it from the site shortly afterward when the other news outlets dropped their investigations. [98]

In 1999, the Drudge Report announced that it had viewed a videotape which was the basis of a Star magazine and Hard Copy story. Under the headline, "Woman Names Bill Clinton Father Of Son In Shocking Video Confession", Drudge reported a videotaped "confession" by a former prostitute who claimed that her son was fathered by Bill Clinton . [99] After a paternity test using a sample of Clinton's DNA found on the dress belonging to Monica Lewinsky , a Star source told Time magazine that "there was no match, not even close." [100] Drudge reported these findings in 1999, but during the 2016 presidential election Drudge revived the story that the child, Danney Williams , then a 30 year old man, really was Clinton's illegitimate son by twisting established facts. [101]

On April 1, 2007, the Drudge Report cited an unnamed "official" source claiming that CNN reporter Michael Ware had "heckled" Republican senators McCain and Graham during a live press conference: [102]

An official at the press conference called Ware's conduct "outrageous," saying, "here you have two United States Senators in Baghdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I've never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter." —   Matthew Drudge, Drudge Report

However, a video hosted by Rawstory showed that Ware did not make a sound nor ask any question during the press conference. [103]

On September 5, 2008, the Drudge Report reported that The Oprah Winfrey Show staffers were "sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin." Drudge said that he had obtained the information from an anonymous source. Winfrey responded in a written statement to news outlets by saying, "The item in today's Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates." Oprah Winfrey's public statement came after she had already endorsed Barack Obama for president on Larry King Live in 2007. [104] Drudge was accused by some commentators of planting a false story for political ends. [105]

On October 23, 2008, the Drudge Report published an unconfirmed exclusive story regarding Ashley Todd , a 20-year-old employee [106] [107] of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) and John McCain volunteer who had allegedly been attacked by a black male for having a McCain sticker on her car in Pittsburgh . The story was reported without a link but as "developing", with the headline "Shock: McCain Volunteer Attacked and Mutilated in Pittsburgh – 'B' carved into 20 yr old Woman's Face." [108] The story set off a "storm of media attention" [106] and was repeated by some conservative bloggers and radio talk-show hosts, all citing the Drudge Report as their source. It was also reported in newspapers and on television around the world. [109] The story was confirmed to be a hoax perpetrated by Todd and, according to Talking Points Memo , spread to reporters by McCain's Pennsylvania communications director. [110]

The Drudge Report printed a retraction, including links to the news stories detailing that the attack had been a hoax, and that Todd had performed a similar "attack" on herself while volunteering in a local Ron Paul grassroots group. She was later asked to leave the group because of the hoax.

The Drudge Report included some articles intimating that U.S. president Barack Obama was not an American citizen. [111]

On August 8, 2016, the Drudge Report displayed a photo depicting two men helping Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ascend a set of stairs during a campaign stop in South Carolina on February 27, 2016. Afterward, several Twitter accounts in support of Republican nominee Donald Trump used the photo with the hashtag #HillaryHealth. [112] The use of the photo was criticized by several commentators [ by whom? ] for presenting a dated photograph out of context to mislead readers. [113] [114]

On October 3, 2016, the Drudge Report published a dubious claim that Bill Clinton had an illegitimate child named Danney Williams, an allegation that the site had reported as debunked in 1999 based on a Time magazine article. [115]

On December 30, 2016, an article listed on the Drudge Report accused the United States federal government of attempting to bring down its website with a denial-of-service attack . [116] [117] Beginning roughly one week earlier, DDoS attacks had repeatedly taken the site offline for extended periods. Cybersecurity analysts speculated that the attack was on the scale of the 2016 Dyn cyberattack and suggested that only a small number of groups would have the ability to take down a highly trafficked site for extended lengths of time. [118]

The Drudge Report included articles about the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory , [119] as well as conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich . [120]

In October 2017, Drudge Report included articles with conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting . [121]

In October 2017, the Drudge Report shared a dubious Breitbart News story claiming that an illegal alien caused the October 2017 Northern California wildfires . [122] The story was rebutted by the Sonoma County 's sheriff department, which stated, "This is completely false, bad, wrong information that Breitbart started and is being put out into the public." [122]

In June 2018, the Drudge Report displayed a headline and photo pairing that some perceived as a suggestion that migrant children who had been separated from their parents were violent criminals. The photo was actually that of a group of Syrian children holding toy guns. [123] [124] [125]

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• 1 2 3 Calderone, Michael (May 12, 2011). "Matt Drudge Hires Washington Times Columnist Charles Hurt" . The Washington Post . Retrieved May 13, 2011 .
• 1 2 Jason M Shepard (2008). "Drudge Report" . Encyclopedia of American Journalism . Taylor & Francis. pp.   146–7. ISBN   978-0-415-96950-5 .
• MacAskill, Ewen (October 3, 2012). "Conservative media release old video of Obama in so-called 'explosive' exclusive" . The Guardian . Retrieved June 27, 2016 .
• Deruy, Emily (October 18, 2012). "Why This 'Obama Phone' Ad Is Misleading" . ABC News . Retrieved July 4, 2016 .
• Rutenberg, Jim; Carter, Bill (November 7, 2001). "A Nation Challenged: The Media; Network Coverage a Target of Fire From Conservatives" . The New York Times . Retrieved April 21, 2009 .
• ↑ Gold, Hadas. "Daniel Halper joins Drudge Report" . Politico .
• ↑ Oliver Darcy (April 18, 2020). "Conservative news mogul Matt Drudge fires back at Trump, says his web traffic is at record levels" . CNN . Retrieved August 9, 2020 .
• ↑ Man, Anthony. "Has Drudge Report lost its clout in the Trump camp?" . sun-sentinel.com . Retrieved August 9, 2020 .
• ↑ "PolitiFact | Drudge Report" . www.politifact.com . Retrieved August 9, 2020 .
• "The Drudge Report Just Made A Huge Change To How It Makes Money" . BuzzFeed News . Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
• "Et tu, Drudge? Alarm grows on right over site's anti-Trump pivot" . The Washington Times . Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
• Suebsaeng, Asawin (November 23, 2019). "Trump Privately Frets 'What's Going on With Drudge?' During Impeachment, Asks Jared Kushner to 'Look Into It' " . Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
• Man, Anthony. "Has Drudge Report lost its clout in the Trump camp?" . sun-sentinel.com . Retrieved April 7, 2020 .
• ↑ "Scandalous scoop breaks online" . BBC News . January 25, 1998 . Retrieved June 23, 2007 .
• ↑ "Blumenthal vs Drudge" . Retrieved December 18, 2006 .
• ↑ Sappell, Joel (August 4, 2007). "Hot links served up daily" . Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on February 11, 2008 . Retrieved August 4, 2007 .
• ↑ "Lists: What's Your Source for That? Where Andrew Breitbart gets his information" . ReasonOnline.com. October 2, 2007 . Retrieved October 1, 2008 .
• ↑ "Andrew Breitbart: Drudge's Human Face" . Gawker.com. Archived from the original on September 9, 2008 . Retrieved September 10, 2008 .
• ↑ "Hollywood Infidel" . Observer.com . September 8, 2008 . Retrieved October 1, 2008 .
• ↑ Ziegler, John (March 7, 2012). Matt Drudge Intentionally Ignored Negative Stories to Help Elect Barack Obama Archived March 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine . News release . Retrieved March 9, 2012.
• ↑ Dornic, Matt (November 2, 2010). "Curl's Secret Gig with Drudge" . www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc . Retrieved April 26, 2011 .
• ↑ Calderone, Michael (January 5, 2015). Former Drudge Report Editor Launches Politics-Focused Site 'Right Read' . HuffPost . Retrieved January 6, 2015.
• ↑ "Profile: Matt Drudge   – Webmaster of pork pies   – Scotland on Sunday" . scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com. Archived from the original on March 29, 2008 . Retrieved March 13, 2009 .
• ↑ Drudge, Matt (January 17, 1998). "Newsweek Kills Story On White House Intern" . The Drudge Report. Archived from the original on September 1, 2006 . Retrieved October 5, 2006 .
• ↑ Johnson, Glen (January 23, 1998). "Newsweek got, held scoop on Clinton story" . AP/Denver Rocky Mountain News . Retrieved April 5, 2007 . [ dead link ]
• 1 2 McClintick, David (November 1998). "Town Crier for the New Age" . Brill's Content. Archived from the original on August 19, 2000 . Retrieved July 23, 2010 .
• ↑ Fineman, Howard; Karen Breslau (February 2, 1998). "Sex, Lies and the President" . Newsweek . Retrieved April 5, 2007 .
• ↑ Carole A., Levitt; Mark E. Rosch (2006). The lawyer's guide to fact finding on the Internet . American Bar Association. p.   198. ISBN   978-1-59031-671-9 . Along with the links comes Drudge's own (conservative) opinions on the news stories he chooses to highlight.
• ↑ Sarno, David (April 7, 2009). "Associated Press accuses online news outlets of 'misappropriation' " . Los Angeles Times . Retrieved April 8, 2009 .
• ↑ "U.S. Attorney's office tells employees not to log on to Drudge Report" . Politico . Retrieved May 16, 2009 .
• ↑ "Malware delivered by Yahoo, Fox, Google ads" . CNET . Archived from the original on June 3, 2010 . Retrieved April 15, 2010 .
• ↑ Allen, Mike (August 10, 2017). "Inside Drudge's new look" . Axios . Retrieved August 10, 2017 .
• ↑ Woodard, Cheryl; Lucia Hwang (2007). Every nonprofit's guide to publishing . Nolo. p.   185. ISBN   978-1-4133-0658-3 .
• ↑ Rahmel, Dan (2007). Beginning Joomla!: From Novice to Professional . Apress. p.   217. ISBN   978-1-59059-848-1 .
• ↑ "The Drudge Report" . webwithoutwords.com. Archived from the original on January 30, 2009 . Retrieved April 13, 2009 . Drudge Report succeeds in having that web "retro" feel of something stuck in the early 90s
• ↑ "Why the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web" . www.37signals.com . Retrieved April 13, 2009 .
• ↑ "A Touching Moment (washingtonpost.com)" . www.washingtonpost.com . July 15, 2004 . Retrieved April 13, 2009 . The next day, Matt Drudge followed suit with his own 'developing' Kerry-Edwards 'story' titled, 'Can't keep hands off each other.'
• ↑ Malone, Michael S. (March 1, 2007). "Silicon Insider: Surfing Upstream" . ABC News . Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 . Retrieved July 4, 2016 . On a given day, the Drudge Report may contain thirty or forty sentence-long headlines, the most important ones in red, all under a single major headline in large bold type. On the really big breaking stories, especially the ones still emerging, Drudge will even post a flashing siren on the screen. {{ cite news }} : CS1 maint: unfit URL ( link )
• ↑ The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power Random House Digital 2007, page 72
• ↑ Sokol, Brett (June 28, 2001). "The Drudge Retort" . Miami New Times . Archived from the original on August 29, 2005 . Retrieved November 1, 2006 . Matt Drudge: "I am a conservative"
• ↑ "Liberal media's voice grows stronger" . Crainsnewyork.com. October 11, 2008 . Retrieved March 19, 2009 . On the Web, The Huffington Post has become a leading news and opinion site just three years after launching. Modeled after conservative news aggregator The Drudge Report"
• ↑ "Will a funny thing happen on the way to Washington?" . Edward Luce . The Financial Times. October 21, 2008. Archived from the original on December 10, 2022 . Retrieved October 29, 2008 . ...the conservative Drudge Report...
• ↑ "McCain labels Obama 'the redistributor' " . Stephen Dinan . The Washington Times . Retrieved October 29, 2008 . ..the conservative Drudge Report...
• ↑ "MoveOn.org Targets AP's Fournier for Alleged Pro-McCain Bias" . Editor and Publisher (pay site) . Retrieved September 10, 2008 . ...the Drudge Report ....and numerous other conservative sites
• ↑ "Drudge Retort Considers Lawsuit Against AP" . MediaPost NY. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009 . Retrieved December 9, 2008 . ...the conservative Drudge Report
• ↑ "A weekly look at what's getting the most looks online" . The Topeka Capital-Journal . Archived from the original on March 21, 2009 . Retrieved December 9, 2008 . ...the Drudge Report, a popular conservative Web site.
• ↑ "Is there room for another Drudge Report?" . Washington Examiner . February 3, 2015 . Retrieved April 23, 2015 . is there a need for another conservative news aggregator? Drudge has dominated the field since the late 1990s.
• ↑ Richard Siklos (June 6, 2008). "The Web 2.0-defying logic of Drudge" . CNN . Retrieved June 28, 2008 .
• ↑ Wallsten, Peter (January 29, 2009). "New political era? Same as the old one" . Los Angeles Times . Retrieved February 7, 2009 . ...well-known conservative warriors such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Matt Drudge...
• ↑ Hansell, Saul (June 16, 2008). "The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs" . New York Times . Retrieved February 21, 2009 .
• ↑ Weiss, Philip (August 24, 2007). "Watching Matt Drudge" . New York Magazine . Retrieved August 19, 2019 .
• ↑ "It's Always Snowing on the Drudge Report" . The New Republic . December 9, 2009 . Retrieved April 24, 2011 .
• ↑ "Ben Shapiro   : Left behind: the democratization of the media   — Townhall.com" . townhall.com. Archived from the original on September 7, 2008 . Retrieved April 14, 2009 .
• 1 2 "Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist   — UCLA Newsroom" . newsroom.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on March 15, 2010 . Retrieved February 28, 2010 . ...Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.
• ↑ Liberman, Mark (December 23, 2005). "Multiplying ideologies considered harmful" . Language Log . Retrieved November 6, 2006 .
• ↑ Liberman, Mark (December 22, 2005). "Linguistics, politics, mathematics" . Language Log . Retrieved November 6, 2006 .
• ↑ "Flawed UCLA-led study on medias liberal bias" . www.spinwatch.org.uk. Archived from the original on November 1, 2010 . Retrieved March 7, 2009 .
• ↑ LaSalvia, Jimmy (December 25, 2015). "Matt Drudge might elect Donald Trump: The GOP front-runner's secret weapon is the conservative media icon" .
• ↑ "Drudge goes all in for Trump" . Politico .
• ↑ Darcy, Oliver (October 10, 2019). "Matt Drudge, an influential figure in conservative media, sours on Trump as he faces impeachment" . CNN Business . Retrieved October 27, 2019 .
• ↑ Rosen, Armin (November 24, 2020). "Matt Drudge Logs Off" . Tablet . Retrieved January 5, 2021 .
• ↑ Byrnes, Jesse (July 25, 2020). "Tucker Carlson: 'Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left' " . TheHill .
• ↑ Fuchs, Christian (July 20, 2020). "Towards a critical theory of communication as renewal and update of Marxist humanism in the age of digital capitalism" . Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour . 50 (3): 335–356. doi : 10.1111/jtsb.12247 . ISSN   0021-8308 . S2CID   225578399 . Examples of alt-right websites are Breitbart, Drudge Report, InfoWars, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, and WorldNetDaily.
• ↑ "Florida Department of State Division of Corporations - Digital, LLC" . Retrieved November 28, 2020 .
• ↑ "Florida Companies Directory - Digital, LLC" . floridacompanysearch.com . Retrieved November 28, 2020 .
• ↑ "OpenCorporates - Digital, LLC" . opencorporates.com . Retrieved November 28, 2020 .
• ↑ "U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - Drudge Report" . uspto.gov . Retrieved November 28, 2020 .
• ↑ "DRUDGE REPORT Trademark Information" . trademarkia.com . Retrieved November 28, 2020 .
• ↑ "The Drudge Report Just Made A Huge Change To How It Makes Money" . Buzzfeednews.com. August 15, 2019 . Retrieved April 23, 2020 .
• ↑ Oliver Darcy (April 18, 2020). "Conservative news mogul Matt Drudge fires back at Trump, says his web traffic is at record levels" . CNN . Retrieved November 25, 2020 .
• ↑ "Drudge Report has lost almost 30 percent of its traffic in recent months amid turn on Trump" . Disrn .
• ↑ Darcy, Oliver (April 18, 2020). "Conservative news mogul Matt Drudge fires back at Trump, says his web traffic is at record levels" . CNN . Retrieved April 23, 2020 .
• ↑ Ellefson, Lindsey (September 14, 2020). "Trump's Right: Drudge Report's Audience Is Down Nearly 40% From Last Year" . TheWrap . Retrieved September 23, 2020 .
• 1 2 3 4 "Drudge Report Sets Tone for National Political Coverage" . ABC News . October 1, 2006 . Retrieved October 1, 2006 .
• ↑ Halpernin, Mark; John F. Harris (October 2006). The Way To Win . Random House. ISBN   978-1-4000-6447-2 .
• ↑ Wallsten, Kevin (2011). "Drudge's world? The Drudge Report's influence on media coverage" . Texas. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015.
• ↑ Drudge, Matt (December 18, 2003). "Host Unhinged After Sales Figures Revealed; Calls Drudge 'Threat To Democracy' " . Drudge Report . Retrieved March 26, 2007 .
• ↑ Kurtz, Howard (September 15, 1998). "MSNBC Pundit Rises With Clinton Crises" . The Washington Post . pp.   E1 . Retrieved October 1, 2006 .
• ↑ Harnden, Toby (February 27, 2009). "Top 10 anti-Barack Obama conservatives" . London: blogs.telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on September 15, 2009 . Retrieved March 3, 2009 . Drudge's deft selection of links helps build a conservative case against Obama every day.
• ↑ "Drudge Retort" . 2009 . Retrieved January 24, 2009 .
• ↑ Hansell, Saul (June 16, 2008). "The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs" . New York Times . Retrieved March 21, 2009 . The Drudge Retort was initially started as a left-leaning parody of the much larger Drudge Report, run by the conservative muckraker Matt Drudge.
• ↑ Barron, James (January 8, 1999). "Pen With Meaning" . New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2008 .
• ↑ Kramer, Staci D. "Drudge Retort's Retort To AP: Personal Issue Resolved But 'Larger Conflict' Remains" . The Washington Post . Retrieved October 1, 2008 .
• ↑ Richtel, Matt (August 27, 1998). "From the Drudge Report To the Drudge Retort" . New York Times . Retrieved October 1, 2008 .
• ↑ Andrews, Robert (June 28, 2010). "PaidContent: where UK newspapers get their traffic" . The Guardian . Retrieved June 27, 2016 .
• ↑ "Newsweek Kills Story on White House Intern" , Drudge Report, January 17, 1998
• ↑ Rutenberg, Jim (October 22, 2007). "The Drudge Report warms to the Clinton camp, or is it vice versa?" . The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved April 6, 2022 .
• ↑ "Obama plays down photo row" . english.aljazeera.net. Archived from the original on August 4, 2008 . Retrieved March 3, 2009 .
• ↑ "Clinton Staffers Circulate 'Dressed' Obama" , Drudge Report, February 27, 2008
• ↑ Spillius, Alex (February 25, 2008). "Barack Obama tribal photo 'sent to Drudge Report by Hillary Clinton staff' " . The Daily Telegraph . London. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022 . Retrieved May 7, 2012 .
• ↑ "News black-out" . BBC News . February 29, 2008 . Retrieved March 2, 2008 .
• ↑ "New Idea defends claims it endangered Prince Harry" . The Daily Telegraph (Australia) . February 29, 2008 . Retrieved February 29, 2008 .
• ↑ "New Idea pleads ignorance on Harry embargo" . ABC Australia News. February 29, 2008 . Retrieved March 1, 2008 .
• ↑ "Frontline Harry a well-kept secret" . The West Australian . Archived from the original on March 4, 2008 . Retrieved February 29, 2008 .
• ↑ "Harry leak disappoints army chief" . BBC News . February 28, 2008 . Retrieved February 29, 2008 .
• ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard; Gillan, Audrey (February 29, 2008). "Army prepares to evacuate Harry after news blackout fails" . The Guardian . Retrieved June 17, 2016 .
• ↑ "Senate Staffers Warned to Stay Clear of Drudge Report" . Fox News. February 28, 2008 . Retrieved March 9, 2010 .
• ↑ Kurtz, Howard (May 2, 2001). "Clinton Aide Settles Libel Suit Against Matt Drudge – at a Cost" . The Washington Post . p.   C01. Archived from the original on August 10, 2018 . Retrieved April 11, 2007 .
• ↑ Drudge, Matt (May 1, 2001). "May Day: Lawsuit Against Drudge Dropped; Blumenthal Pays Cash To Get Out!" . Drudge Report. Archived from the original on May 6, 2001 . Retrieved December 15, 2006 .
• ↑ Tim McDonald (2001). "Online Matt Drudge Libel Suit Comes to 'Wimpy Conclusion' " . Newsfactor.com. Archived from the original on August 23, 2007 . Retrieved July 30, 2007 .
• ↑ "Blumenthal vs Drudge" . Tech Law Journal. 1998 . Retrieved December 18, 2006 .
• ↑ Polier, Alexandra (June 7, 2004). "John Kerry intern scandal   – Alexandra Polier's account" . New York Magazine . Retrieved June 7, 2004 .
• ↑ Special Reports Personal Collection. Drudge Report Archives. Retrieved on April 2, 2007
• ↑ Hetherington, James (June 18, 2018). "Man Claiming to be Bill Clinton's Son Wants Second DNA Test" . Newsweek . Retrieved August 19, 2019 .
• ↑ Borchers, Callum. "Danney Williams is not Bill Clinton's son, no matter what Matt Drudge tells you" . The Washington Post . Retrieved August 19, 2019 .
• ↑ Drudge, Matt (April 2, 2007). "McCain heckled by CNN reporter" . Drudge Report . Retrieved April 2, 2007 .
• Roston, Michael; Edwards, David (April 2, 2007). "CNN reporter slams Drudge's charge that he 'heckled' McCain; Exclusive video confirms his claim" . Rawstory . Archived from the original on April 6, 2007 . Retrieved August 13, 2017 .
• Memmott, Mark (April 2, 2007). "CNN's Ware fires back at Drudge report about 'heckling' " . On Deadline (blog). USA Today . Archived from the original on October 7, 2008 . Retrieved August 13, 2017 .
• ↑ "Oprah Denies Report She's Balking at Having Palin on Show" . Fox News. September 5, 2008 . Retrieved February 20, 2009 .
• Harris, Paul (September 7, 2008). "US election: Storm as Oprah says no to Palin interview" . The Guardian . Retrieved June 27, 2016 . Some experts believe the issue, initially reported on Drudge ... was a media ploy to drag Winfrey's backing of Obama into the election and show a media bias against the Republicans
• Zeleny, Jeff (May 3, 2007). "Oprah Endorses Obama" . New York Times . Retrieved June 27, 2016 .
• 1 2 Fuoco, Michael A. (October 25, 2008). "McCain volunteer admits to hoax" . www.post-gazette.com . Retrieved March 3, 2009 . One photo appeared on The Drudge Report on Thursday, setting off a storm of media attention.
• ↑ Meg White. "Ashley Todd, PA Racist Hoax "Victim," Was Paid Organizer for College Republican National Committee, Not a Volunteer" . BuzzFlash.com. Archived from the original on October 30, 2008 . Retrieved October 29, 2008 .
• ↑ Feldman, Jeffrey (October 23, 2008). "Drudge Puts Dangerous Spin on Mugging, Implies Violence Targeting McCain Volunteers" . Huffington Post . Retrieved October 23, 2008 .
• ↑ "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" . NBC News . October 24, 2008 . Retrieved March 3, 2009 .
• ↑ "McCain Campaign Pushed Now-Discredited Attack Story" . TPM. October 24, 2008. Archived from the original on October 25, 2008.
• Stelter, Brian (April 27, 2011). " 'Birthers' Fanned Flames of Conspiracy for Years" . The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved October 20, 2017 .
• "Obama birth certificate release won't kill "birther" movement" . Retrieved October 20, 2017 .
• ↑ "Hillary health myth: From Twitter theories to a Trump speech - BBC News" . August 19, 2016 . Retrieved August 22, 2016 .
• ↑ Stelter, Brian (August 8, 2016). "Drudge Report misleads readers with Hillary Clinton photo" . CNNMoney . Retrieved August 8, 2016 .
• ↑ Weigel, David (August 8, 2016). "Armed with junk science and old photos, critics question #HillarysHealth" . Washington Post . Retrieved August 8, 2016 .
• Golshan, Tara (October 3, 2016). "Drudge Report is spreading a conspiracy about Bill Clinton it debunked in 1999" . Vox .
• Emery, David (October 3, 2016). "Paternity Jest" . Snopes.com .
• ↑ Silva, Cristina (December 29, 2016). "US Government Attacks Drudge Report? Conservative Website Down Because Of Distributed Denial Of Service Attack, Matt Drudge Tweets" . International Business Times . Retrieved December 30, 2016 .
• ↑ Hadley, Greg (December 29, 2016). "Matt Drudge suggests US government behind cyberattack on 'Drudge Report' " . The Sacramento Bee . Retrieved December 30, 2016 .
• ↑ Darcy, Oliver (January 8, 2017). "Someone is trying to take down the Drudge Report, and it's a mystery who's behind it" . Business Insider .
• ↑ "Flynn under fire for fake news" . POLITICO . Retrieved October 20, 2017 .
• ↑ Darcy, Oliver. "Exclusive: The chaos behind the scenes of Fox News' now-retracted Seth Rich story" . CNNMoney . Retrieved October 20, 2017 .
• ↑ Grynbaum, Michael M. (October 9, 2017). "Las Vegas Massacre Gives InfoWars More Conspiracy Fodder" . The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved October 20, 2017 .
• 1 2 Ansari, Brianna Sacks, Talal. "Breitbart Made Up False Story That Immigrant Started Deadly Sonoma Wildfires, Sheriff's Office Says" . BuzzFeed . Retrieved October 20, 2017 . {{ cite web }} : CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link )
• ↑ "FACT CHECK: Were Gun-Toting Children Photographed on the United States Border?" . Snopes.com . Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
• ↑ Frej, Willa (June 19, 2018). "Drudge Report Used Photo Of Children In Syria To Depict U.S. Border Crisis" . Huffington Post . Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
• ↑ "The Drudge Report chose a very misleading photo for a child immigration story" . Vox . Retrieved June 19, 2018 .
• "Drudge Report Archive" . December 1998. Archived from the original on October 17, 2014 . Retrieved October 10, 2014 .
• "Internet Archive (less comprehensive)" . December 10, 1997. Archived from the original on November 1, 2001.
• "Drudge Report Archives" . November 2001.

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Here Are The 5 Most Liberal And Conservative Media Twitter Feeds

You shall judge a man by his friends. Or his Twitter follows.

A group of researchers at Duke University found that public figures who are not openly political, as well as private citizens who use the site mainly for social purposes, unwittingly reveal their political leanings through whom they choose to follow, and who follows them.

In other words, it's not just what you tweet.

“The order just emerges from the patterns in followings,” researcher David B. Sparks said.

According to the Times :

The Duke analysis started by comparing the networks of a large number of Twitter accounts. The accounts of those in the political center will have networks that look similar, while the more liberal accounts will have progressively less in common with the more conservative ones. The two accounts that have the least in common will be the most conservative and the most liberal. Among members of the House of Representatives those accounts belonged to Michelle Bachmann and John Conyers , respectively.

We've culled the five most left-leaning and right-leaning media figures from the study.

But first, here's who missed the list: The O'Reilly Factor , Ann Coulter , and Drudge Report were not far enough right, while Katie Couric , MSNBC, the Washington Post , and Brian Williams were just left of center.

#5 Most Conservative - Daily Caller

Founded by Tucker Carlson, a 20-year media veteran, and Neil Patel, former chief policy adviser to Vice President Cheney, The Daily Caller is a 24-hour news site. On March 22, it tweeted , "TheDC wants to know: Do you think the Libyan war is going to cause problems for Democrats in 2012? http://j.mp/4IWfV9 ."

#4 Most Conservative - Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity, a former general contractor turned political commentator, now hosts a nationally syndicated talk-radio show and a TV show on FOX News. A recent tweet reads, "Some leaders aren't backing Obama's plan for Libya-latest reports + Col North, Fmr rep Sestak, @ dickmorristweet & the Great American Panel."  

#3 Most Conservative - Andrew Breitbart

This former Drudge Report editor, now a Washington Times commentator, says on his Twitter profile, "RTing Leftist H8 Since 2010!"

#2 Most Conservative - Michelle Malkin

A conservative blogger, political commentator, and author, on March 21, Michelle Malkin tweeted , "Just posted - Hey, NPR: Fund your own lame liberal humor -- and leave my family alone http://tinyurl.com/4e53gao ."

#1 Most Conservative - Weekly Standard

Founded in 1995 and now edited by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard , on March 22, tweeted a Tax Foundation article, "No Country Leans on Upper-Income Households as Much as U.S."

And Now at #5 Most Liberal - Daily Kos

This liberal daily weblog with political analysis tweeted on March 22, "Rove claims Bush would have been tougher on Qaddafi than Obama http://bit.ly/hO3p2d ."

#4 Most Liberal - Salon

This online arts and culture magazine regularly features work on or by various literary luminaries. A recent tweet of an article states, "Alarmed by the so-called crisis in Japan? The invisible hand of the free market explains nuclear safety http://salon.com/a/sIC4fAA ."

#3 Most Liberal - Mother Jones

Mother Jones is an independent, nonprofit magazine focused on investigative journalism. On March 22, it tweeted , "Evangelist Franklin Graham: Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated Obama administration: http://bit.ly/heVun5 ."

#2 Most Liberal - thenation

Founded in 1865, The Nation is a weekly journal of opinion, featuring analysis on politics and culture. A March 20 tweet states, "The message out of Fukushima is clear: our own fleet of leaky old nuclear plants should be decommissioned now. http://bit.ly/ew4uYI #p2 ."

#1 Most Liberal - ezraklein

Blogger for the Washington Post , columnist for Newsweek , and contributor to MSNBC, Ezra Klein tweeted on March 22, "Urban Institute doesn't buy GOP claims that health-care reform is a job-killer nor Dem claims that it's a job creator: http://bit.ly/e7nlpq ."

Conservative Or Liberal, Now...

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• Main content

"Fake News," Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction

• What is "Fake News"?
• Why is this important?
• Where do news sources fall on the political bias spectrum?
• How do you recognize bias in yourself and the media?
• How can you read, listen, and/or share news?

The Liberal Media

Does the media have a liberal bias?

Here's one research-based answer to the question of liberal bias:

The documentary The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News uses empirical evidence to look at ownership of the mainstream news media, filters that affect what news gets published, and examples of actual news coverage in order to show that conservative political and corporate interests significantly shape news coverage in the United States.

• The myth of the liberal media : the propaganda model of news by Media Education Foundation Publication Date: 1997 Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky overturn one of the dominant myths in our political culture - the notion that mainstream media have a liberal bias. Drawing on extensive empirical research, they reveal that in actuality the news media have become so subordinated to corporate interests that they are far to the right of the American people. Available: U-M access - streaming video U-M Askwith Media Library copy

The book that presents Herman & Chomsky's propaganda model of news:

Searching on subjects such as "Mass media -- political aspects" or "Mass media -- objectivity" will bring up additional viewpoints and sources on this topic.

News Sources on the Political Spectrum

What news sources are left-leaning, centrist, or right-leaning.

There is no completely clear answer to this question because there is no one exact methodology to measure and rate the partisan bias of news sources.

Here are a couple of resources that can help:

• AllSides All Sides is a news website that presents multiple sources side by side in order to provide the full scope of news reporting.

The  Allsides Bias Ratings page  allows you to filter a list of news sources by bias (left, center, right).

AllSides uses a patented bias rating system to classify news sources as left, center, or right leaning. Components of the rating system include crowd-sourcing, surveys, internal research, and use of third party sources such as Wikipedia and research conducted by Groseclose and Milyo at UCLA. Note that while the Groseclose & Milyo results are popular, the methodology it is not without critique .

Note that AllSides does periodically revisit classifications for particular sources and their ratings may change over time. In some instances, the News and Opinion sections of a specific news outlet may be rated separately (for examples, see  Wall Street Journal , or NPR ).

• Pew Research Center - Political Polarization Survey data reveals the news source favored by people according to their political beliefs.

A report based on a 2014 survey shows which news sources are used and considered trustworthy based on individual's political values (liberal or conservative). Note that this report measures the political leanings of the audience rather than the source itself.

• Blue Feed, Red Feed An interactive tool from the Wall Street Journal that allows you to "See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side." Note that content is archived as of August 2019.

The Blue Feed, Red Feed tool relies on data from a large study of Facebook users conducted in 2015 by Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic ( U-M Library access ). The ideological alignment of news sources on Facebook was measured based on the stated ideological affiliations of users who interacted with the content. 

Placing Some News Sources on the Political Spectrum

Here are a few examples of major news sources and their so-called "bias" based on ratings from AllSides  (as of March 2017) and the reported level of trust from partisan audiences from the Pew Research Center survey.

Note that much of these ratings are based on surveys of personal perceptions. Consider that these may be impacted by the hostile media effect , wherein "partisans perceive media coverage as unfairly biased against their side" (source:  Perloff, R. M. (2015). A three-decade retrospective on the hostile media effect.  Mass Communication and Society ,  18 (6), 701-729. (U-M Library access) ).

In the Middle

Common ground: centrist news sources.

• Wall Street Journal Daily business-focused newspaper based out of New York City.

The Wall Street Journal news content has a bias rating of "Center" according to AllSides (although the WSJ Opinion section is rated as "Lean Right" - the news and opinion content are rated separately). The Pew Research Center found that the Wall Street Journal is read by people of all political leanings and is the only news source that is more trusted than distrusted by people all across the political spectrum. There is, however, some debate but it has been accused of being biased to both the left and the right.

• BBC News The British Broadcasting Corporation News division produces television, radio, and internet news. The BBC is a public service broadcaster established by a Royal Charter of the United Kingdom.

The BBC News has a bias rating of "Center" from AllSides. According to Pew, BBC is more trusted than distrusted among the different ideological groups except for consistently conservative individuals who view BBC as about equally trusted as distrusted.

Almost  Center News Sources

The following news sources are rated as "Center" by AllSides and are noted for stating an independent and unbiased agenda, as well as consistently providing balanced coverage (giving time to both sides of an issue). However, they are listed here as almost center because of audience distrust from conservatives.

Respondents to the Pew survey who are consistently liberal, mostly liberal, and mixed views, rated these sources as more trusted than distrusted. Mostly conservatives rated them as about equally trusted as distrusted; Consistently conservatives rated them as more distrusted than trusted.

• NPR National Public Radio is a U.S. private and publicly funded non-profit organization that syndicates to a network of local stations.
• PBS NewsHour The Public Broadcasting Service is a non-commercial U.S. television broadcaster and distributor.

Sources on the Left and Right

A key finding from the Pew survey is that conservatives have a higher level of distrust overall of news sources and consume a much narrower range of news sources. Liberal audiences trust and consume a broader range of news sources.

Therefore, there are more news sources that are rated or perceived as center-left/slight left leaning (especially mainstream sources); there are fewer news sources that are center-right. This represents the popular conservative discourse that the mainstream media has a liberal bias (and potential hostile media effect ).

Towards the Left

These news sources are rated as "Lean Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative and consistently conservative; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly liberal, and consistently liberal.

• New York Times American daily newspaper published since 1851.
• Washington Post American daily newspaper published out of Washington D.C. since 1877.
• USA Today American daily newspaper that provides both news and entertainment coverage.

USA Today was moved from "Center" to "Lean Left" in July 2021 after an AllSides Editorial Review. 

These news sources are rated as "Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.

• BuzzFeed News News division of larger digital media company BuzzFeed; the news division was founded in 2011. BuzzFeed News moved to a separate domain in 2018.
• Mother Jones American news and culture magazine first published in 1976.

Towards the Right

These news sources are rated as "Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal and consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.  Note that this represents a further bias leaning than the "towards the left" sources. There are no direct parallels on the right.

• Drudge Report News aggregation site founded by Matt Drudge in 1996.

These news sources are rated as "Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.

• Fox News American news television channel headquartered in New York City and created by Rupert Murdoch in 1996.
• The Blaze / Glenn Beck Program News platform founded by Glenn Beck in 2010
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• URL: https://guides.lib.umich.edu/fakenews

Best political sites: Liberal, conservative, and nonpartisan

There are people on all sides of the fence who use the following sites as sources for their own political understanding.

Now that the U.S. has witnessed a peaceful transfer of power, some in the country are saying that it's time to unite. And while that may be possible for some, others still frequent political commentary sites that aim to sway public opinion in one way or another.

There are people on both sides of the political fence--left or right--that use the following sites as sources for their own political understanding and to help them formulate their own agenda. To those folks, these biased sites provide value. But to some, nonpartisan sites are important and they want to hear the unbiased truth. Either way, politics is an extremely contentious business. And whether you're looking for liberal-leaning posts on the greatness of President Obama or conservative discussions on the problems with the president's stimulus package, you can find it all in the following sites.

Conservative sites

Drudge Report Drudge Report may just be a collection of links, but critics say they tend to lean to the right. Perhaps that's because Matt Drudge, the site's founder, became famous by being the first source to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal after Newsweek decided not to publish it.

Since then, Drudge Report has become a daily haven for conservatives who want to take aim at liberals. It works: Drudge Report has over 3 million unique visitors each month, according to its internal figures. Conservative rating: 4 out of 5

Michelle Malkin Michelle Malkin may be just one person, but her conservative punditry has ignited fierce debate across the Web.

Malkin first started as a newspaper reporter over a decade ago. Since then, she has become a well-known conservative thinker, nationally-syndicated columnist, and author of three antiliberal books. She updates her blog daily with antiliberal and right-leaning opinions. Conservative rating: 5 out 5

National Review Online National Review Online is the online version of the conservative magazine of the same name. Designed for the Republican or conservative, the site features news, commentary, and opinion on some of the most important political happenings of the day.

The National Review is widely considered one of the most influential conservative publications in the world and as it explains in its "About" page, it constantly aims at providing the "right's take" on political issues facing the world. Conservative rating: 4 out of 5

TownHall The self-proclaimed, "No. 1 conservative Web site," TownHall provides political commentary and analysis from more than 100 leading conservative columnists to "amplify those conservative voices in America's political debates."

TownHall takes aim at the barriers between news and opinion and provides an arena for conservatives to espouse their opinions on the state of the world. The site is often updated with discussions on why President Obama's policies may hurt the world. Conservative rating: 5 out 5

The Weekly Standard The Weekly Standard made its debut in 1995. Since then, the publication, which is edited by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, two Fox News contributors, has become one of the leaders in the conservative punditry space.

Unlike National Review , which reports on the news, The Weekly Standard 's writers opine on the political events from the week and the site is populated with columns written specifically for the print version of the magazine. Because of that, it doesn't offer much unique online content. Regardless, it's still a popular destination for those who don't want to spend money on the subscription. Conservative rating: 4 out of 5

Sites for liberals

Daily Kos Started in 2002 by Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos provides liberals with an outlet to express their anger with the right. The blog is filled with left-leaning opinions on the day's topics and traces its roots back to "those dark days when an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous."

It must be working. The site has more than 2 million daily visits and a full list of paid staffers that churn out content. Liberal rating: 5 out 5

Huffington Post Although Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post's founder, claims her site does its best to provide content outside politics, the vast majority of its visitors go there for liberal commentary on world events.

That said, Huffington Post does feature many more news stories than it did in the past and most seem to be more objective than those found on other left-leaning sites. But once you dig into the comments and columnist commentary, it becomes blatantly clear that Huffington Post still has a solid liberal following and it does its best to cater to that group. Liberal rating: 3.5 out of 5

LiberalOasis If you're looking for one of the most liberal sites on the Web, look no further than LiberalOasis . The blog has a stated goal of "revitalizing liberalism" and provides commentary on the political world each morning.

The vast majority of those posts take aim at conservative thinkers and Republicans in Congress, while being apologetic to left-leaning politicians and ideals. The site also features a Links section for those who want more content from liberals and features posts from other sources across the Web that fall in line with its agenda. Liberal rating: 5 out 5

MoveOn.org More of a political action committee than a content site, MoveOn.org has enjoyed growing popularity thanks to hard-hitting commentary on former President Bush and other major Republican figures.

As the organization's "About" page explains, MoveOn.org "conducts major campaigns, from its work to protect the Supreme Court from a hard-right justice to its campaign to defeat the right wing and elect moderates and progressives in 2008."

Although it stumbled in 2004 when Bush won the presidential election handily over Senator John Kerry, MoveOn's influence helped Democrats take control of both houses of Congress in 2006 and see President Barack Obama become the 44th president of the U.S. Liberal rating: 5 out of 5

The Nation The Nation proudly calls itself "the flagship of the left." It should: the publication, which has been operating since 1865, frequently attacks conservative thinkers (a recent blog post pokes fun at conservative pundit, William Kristol, for losing his column in The New York Times op-ed page) and heaps praise on the left.

The Nation provides readers with videos, podcasts, and a student section where it aims to enlighten those in post-secondary schools. All the while, it plans to "wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation." Liberal rating: 4 out of 5

Nonpartisan sites

Not every political site has an agenda, however. Here are sites that, by not taking anyone's side and focusing on in-depth research, provide a nonpartisan view of the world of politics.

FactCheck.org FactCheck.org is a self-proclaimed "nonpartisan" site that tries to hold politicians accountable. And by providing a wealth of research, it does a fine job.

Instead of espousing one side's beliefs, FactCheck.org tackles a politician's record or major issue and sets the record straight. It performs in-depth research to find out if both sides are being truthful in their statements on a subject and allows the reader to formulate their own opinions off the collected facts. It's a great source for those who want to cut through all the politics.

Political Base Political Base is a structured wiki that allows readers to edit much of the text, giving the site's community the opportunity to compare data, while still creating and editing the political content. The site is broken down into money, people, issues, elections, and other categories and each features posts taking one side or another.

Political Base also provides information on political candidates, including public data on campaign donations and a full listing of celebrity donations. The site features commentary from all sides. And although some posts are extremely liberal and others are extremely conservative, the simple fact remains: the site provides all views.

Disclosure: Political Base was founded by CNET Co-Founder, Shelby Bonnie

Project Vote Smart "Picture this: thousands of citizens (conservative and liberal alike) working together, spending endless hours researching the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups."

That's Project Vote Smart in a nutshell. The organization provides outstanding information on every current or prospective elected official and does what it can to inform the public about the respective person's entire history. Its research is exhaustive and its accuracy is never put into question. Project Vote Smart is one of the best nonpartisan sites on the Web.

Spot-On Spot-On originally started in 2003 as a forum for Chris Nolan, the site's founder, to express her opinions on politics. Since then, the site has grown into a syndication platform where clients can acquire articles on the site and place them into their own publication.

Armed with more than 10 writers, Spot-On provides readers with viewpoints from both sides of the aisle and allows its writers to say whatever they think. The content is individually liberal or individually conservative, but taken together, the site's vision is nonpartisan.

• Find Articles
• Credibility Continuum This link opens in a new window
• Fake News Games!
• News and the Political Spectrum
• Fake News and the 2016 Election

New Sources on the Political Spectrum

What news sources are left-leaning, centrist, or right-leaning.

There is no completely clear answer to this question because there is no one exact methodology to measure and rate the partisan bias of news sources.

Here are a couple of resources that can help:

• AllSides All Sides is a news website that presents multiple sources side by side in order to provide the full scope of news reporting.

The  Allsides Bias Ratings page  allows you to filter a list of news sources by bias (left, center, right).

AllSides uses a patented bias rating system to classify news sources as left, center, or right leaning. Components of the rating system include crowd-sourcing, surveys, internal research, and use of third party sources such as Wikipedia and research conducted by Groseclose and Milyo at UCLA. Note that while the Groseclose & Milyo results are popular, the methodology it is not without critique .

• Pew Research Center - Political Polarization Survey data reveals the news source favored by people according to their political beliefs.

A report based on a 2014 survey shows which news sources are used and considered trustworthy based on individual's political values (liberal or conservative). Note that this report measures the political leanings of the audience rather than the source itself.

• Blue Feed, Red Feed An interactive tool from the Wall Street Journal that allows you to "See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side"

The Blue Feed, Red Feed tool relies on data from a large study of Facebook users conducted in 2015 by Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic ( MLibrary access ). The ideological alignment of news sources on Facebook was measured based on the stated ideological affiliations of users who interacted with the content. 

Placing Some News Sources on the Political Spectrum

Here are a few examples of major news sources and their so-called "bias" based on ratings from AllSides  (as of March 2017) and the reported level of trust from partisan audiences from the Pew Research Center survey.

Note that much of these ratings are based on surveys of personal perceptions. Consider that these may be impacted by the hostile media effect , wherein "partisans perceive media coverage as unfairly biased against their side" (source:  Perloff, R. M. (2015). A three-decade retrospective on the hostile media effect.  Mass Communication and Society ,  18 (6), 701-729. MLibrary access ).

In the Middle

Common ground: centrist news sources.

• Wall Street Journal Daily business-focused newspaper based out of New York City.

The Wall Street Journal has a bias rating of "Center" according to AllSides. The Pew Research Center found that the Wall Street Journal is read by people of all political leanings and is the only news source that is more trusted than distrusted by people all across the political spectrum. There is, however, some debate but it has been accused of being biased to both the left and the right.

• BBC News The British Broadcasting Corporation News division produces television, radio, and internet news. The BBC is a public service broadcaster established by a Royal Charter of the United Kingdom.

The BBC News has a bias rating of "Center" from AllSides. According to Pew, BBC is more trusted than distrusted among the different ideological groups except for consistently conservative individuals who view BBC as about equally trusted as distrusted.

• USA Today American daily newspaper that provides both news and entertainment coverage.

USA Today has a bias rating of "Center" from AllSides. According to the Pew survey, USA Today is more trusted than distrusted among the different ideological groups except for consistently conservatives who view USA Today as more distrusted than trusted.

Almost  Center News Sources

The following news sources are rated as "Center" by AllSides and are noted for stating an independent and unbiased agenda, as well as consistently providing balanced coverage (giving time to both sides of an issue). However, they are listed here as almost center because of audience distrust from conservatives.

Respondents to the Pew survey who are consistently liberal, mostly liberal, and mixed views, rated these sources as more trusted than distrusted. Mostly conservatives rated them as about equally trusted as distrusted; Consistently conservatives rated them as more distrusted than trusted.

• NPR National Public Radio is a U.S. private and publicly funded non-profit organization that syndicates to a network of local stations.
• PBS NewsHour The Public Broadcasting Service is a non-commercial U.S. television broadcaster and distributor.

Sources on the Left and Right

A key finding from the Pew survey is that conservatives have a higher level of distrust overall of news sources and consume a much narrower range of news sources. Liberal audiences trust and consume a broader range of news sources.

Therefore, there are more news sources that are rated or perceived as center-left/slight left leaning (especially mainstream sources); there are fewer news sources that are center-right. This represents the popular conservative discourse that the mainstream media has a liberal bias (and potential hostile media effect ).

Towards the Left

These news sources are rated as "Lean Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative and consistently conservative; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly liberal, and consistently liberal.

• New York Times American daily newspaper published since 1851.
• Washington Post American daily newspaper published out of Washington D.C. since 1877.

These news sources are rated as "Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.

• Huffington Post American news aggregator and blog founded by Arianna Huffington in 2005.
• Mother Jones American news and culture magazine first published in 1976.

Towards the Right

These news sources are rated as "Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal and consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.  Note that this represents a further bias leaning than the "towards the left" sources. There are no direct parallels on the right.

• Fox News American news television channel headquartered in New York City and created by Rupert Murdoch in 1996.

These news sources are rated as "Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.

• The Blaze / Glenn Beck Program News platform founded by Glenn Beck in 2010
• Drudge Report News aggregation site founded by Matt Drudge in 1996.

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• URL: https://libguides.franklinpierce.edu/fakenews

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Regions & Countries

1. the partisanship and ideology of american voters.

The partisan identification of registered voters is now evenly split between the two major parties: 49% of registered voters are Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, and a nearly identical share – 48% – are Republicans or lean to the Republican Party.

The partisan balance has tightened in recent years following a clear edge in Democratic Party affiliation during the last administration.

• Four years ago, in the run-up to the 2020 election, Democrats had a 5 percentage point advantage over the GOP (51% vs. 46%).

The share of voters who are in the Democratic coalition reached 55% in 2008. For much of the last three decades of Pew Research Center surveys, the partisan composition of registered voters has been more closely divided.

Partisans and partisan leaners in the U.S. electorate

About two-thirds of registered voters identify as a partisan, and they are roughly evenly split between those who say they are Republicans (32% of voters) and those who say they are Democrats (33%). Roughly a third instead say they are independents or something else (35%), with most of these voters leaning toward one of the parties. Partisan leaners often share the same political views and behaviors as those who directly identify with the party they favor.

The share of voters who identify as independent or something else is somewhat higher than in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As a result, there are more “leaners” today than in the past. Currently, 15% of voters lean toward the Republican Party and 16% lean toward the Democratic Party. By comparison, in 1994, 27% of voters leaned toward either the GOP (15%) or the Democratic Party (12%).

Party identification and ideology

While the electorate overall is nearly equally divided between those who align with the Republican and Democratic parties, a greater share of registered voters say they are both ideologically conservative and associate with the Republican Party (33%) than say they are liberal and align with the Democratic Party (23%).

A quarter of voters associate with the Democratic Party and describe their views as either conservative or moderate, and 14% identify as moderates or liberals and are Republicans or Republican leaners.

The partisan and ideological composition of voters is relatively unchanged over the last five years.

(As a result of significant mode differences in measures of ideology between telephone and online surveys, there is not directly comparable data on ideology prior to 2019.)

Facts are more important than ever

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Report Materials

Table of contents, behind biden’s 2020 victory, a voter data resource: detailed demographic tables about verified voters in 2016, 2018, what the 2020 electorate looks like by party, race and ethnicity, age, education and religion, interactive map: the changing racial and ethnic makeup of the u.s. electorate, in changing u.s. electorate, race and education remain stark dividing lines, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Bias of HuffPost

How we determined this rating:

• Independent Review
• Community Feedback:   ratings
• AllSides has high confidence in this bias rating.

Unless otherwise noted, this bias rating refers only to online news coverage, not TV, print, or radio content.

The source displays media bias in ways that strongly align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas. A Left rating is our most liberal rating on the political spectrum.

About HuffPost's Bias Rating

What a "left" rating means, bias reviews, community feedback, confidence level, additional information.

• Ownership & Funding

Articles from HuffPost

HuffPost is featured on the AllSides Media Bias Chart™ .

HuffPost is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Left.

Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Left display media bias in ways that strongly align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas. This is our most liberal rating on the political spectrum.

According to AllSides analysis, HuffPost has a tendency to use sensationalism in headlines, and to employ negative spin when reporting on Republicans and conservatives. 

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HuffPost Rated Left in May 2023 Independent Review

An AllSides May 2023 Independent Review returned a rating of Left for Huffpost. The reviewer noted several instances of sensationalism, slant, spin, emotionalism, and omission of viewpoint . 

Coverage was consistently critical of Republicans and right-leaning issues, often omitting viewpoints or framing conservatives in a negative light . The reviewer noted uses of sensational words such as “slams” and “rips” when covering conservatives, but language used to describe liberals was consistently neutral or positive. Examples of articles perceived as Left were:

• Donald Trump Reportedly Got Mad At A Journalist And ‘Tossed’ His Phones
• GOP Lawmaker’s Wild Claim About Those Who ‘Hate Homosexuals’ Causes Literal Jaw Drop
• Donald Trump Jr. Whines About Fox News Not Inviting Him On For Longest Time
• Former GOP Lawmaker Rips Republicans With ‘Simple’ Answer To Gun Violence

HuffPost rated Left in Jan. 2013, March 2013, and Oct. 2013 Blind Bias Surveys

The results from the January 2013, March 2013, and October 2013 Blind Surveys (which are normalized to better reflect American opinion) indicated that The Huffington Post had a Left bias (see other  highlights of that study here ). 

As of April 2024, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for HuffPost. On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Lean Left bias.

As of April 2024, AllSides has high confidence in our Left rating for HuffPost. Two or more bias reviews have affirmed this rating or the source is transparent about bias.

Political Leanings of HuffPost's Audience

According to the 2014 Pew Research Study, Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum ,  the majority (59%) of HuffPost  readers hold political values to the political left or left-of-center. 17% of HuffPost 's audience is right or right-of-center (compared with 26% of all respondents to the survey). Roughly 23% of HuffPost 's audience is considered mixed or center (compared with 36% of all respondents to the survey).

About HuffPost

HuffPost is an  online news source  co-founded in May 2005 by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti; some sources also list Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart as a co-founder. Peretti also co-founded BuzzFeed  in 2006. Formerly The Huffington Post, the news and blog site was originally  intended  to be a liberal counterweight to the conservative news aggregator  Drudge Report . 

On its About page , HuffPost states (retrieved Sept. 30, 2022) that "we report with empathy and put people at the heart of every story." In a section titled, "OUR COMMITMENT TO INCLUSIVITY," HuffPost states, "We believe diversity – in who we are, in the audience we write for and in whose stories we tell – is critical to our mission. We aim to write for, and not just about, those left out of traditional power structures; to approach stories inclusively; and to serve a diverse audience with stories that matter to them. This means including a diverse range of voices in our reporting, actively pursuing diversity in our newsroom, and listening to our readers and viewers to make sure we're as open and responsive as possible."

Ariana Huffington won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for national reporting. She has been part of Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the list of Forbes most Powerful Women. According to the Alexa Global Traffic Rank , The Huffington Post was ranked as the number one most popular political site in July 2012.

Third-Party Claims of Bias

HuffPost is frequently regarded as a liberal or progressive outlet. In 2011, the Los Angeles Times said because of its news aggregation, the outlet "has been criticized for luring traffic away from traditional news outlets and contributing to an environment in which online news has been less profitable than the news business had hoped."

Related:  How Media Bias is a Business: HuffPost and Daily Wire

HuffPost Ownership and Funding

Owner: BuzzFeed, Inc.

Who Owns and Funds HuffPost?

In March 2011, Huffington Post was acquired by AOL for $315 million . AOL would go on to be acquired by Verizon Communications in June 2015 and became a part of Verizon Media. In November 2020 BuzzFeed Inc. agreed to acquire the HuffingtonPost in a stock deal. Comcast and its NBCUniversal subsidiary own about a third of BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed has said that it intends to stay independent. Comcast owns NBC Universal. Brian L. Roberts is the chairman, president, and CEO of Comcast. Comcast is publicly traded.

Financing and ownership information last updated February 24, 2021. If you think this information is out of date or needs to be updated, please contact us .