DOCSLIB.ORG

Newsweek Calls Drudge's Lewinsky Bombshell 'Epic Newsweek Scoop'

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Newsweek Calls Drudge's Lewinsky Bombshell 'Epic Newsweek Scoop' Newsweek Calls Drudge's Lewinsky Bombshell 'Epic Newsweek Scoop' LARRY O'CONNOR, Breitbart (Dec 26, 2012) Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST — NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT **World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States! http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2002/01/17/20020117_175502_ml.htm With those words, Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report forever changed journalism in America. And now, almost fifteen years to the day, the biggest casualty of that changing landscape is the “Old Media” magazine Drudge scooped that January evening in 1998, Newsweek, has shut its doors forever. Shockingly, Newsweek still doesn’t get it. In its final print issue, Newsweek finally allows reporter Michael Isikoff to write about the story completely unfettered. The title of his article is a brilliant example of complete and total denial: Monica Lewinsky: The Inside Story of an Epic Newsweek Scoop [The page is no longer on the Daily Beast’s site. http://bit.ly/IsikoffDeadPage It is on the Internet Archive: http://bit.ly/IsikoffArchive2012] What are we missing here? At this point, every 1st year journalism school (they still have journalism schools, don’t they?) student knows that Newsweek SPIKED Isikoff’s story and Matt Drudge is the man who faced the vindictive wrath of the Clinton White House (and the entrenched journalism club in Washington and New York) and broke the story that became the biggest blockbuster in a generation. 1 It’s the height of hubris for Newsweek to now claim the Lewinsky story was their scoop when they passed on it and allowed themselves to be scooped by Drudge and the Washington Post three days later. It’s also an illustration in denial, even as the casket is closing on the long-dead corpse of the lifeless magazine. Even in death, Newsweek can’t acknowledge that it has been surpassed not just by a more immediate and capable medium (the Internet) but also by a more nimble and pro-active journalistic style. New Media is populated not by the establishment insiders that occupied the offices of the organs that held a monopoly on news and information fifty years ago. New Media responds to the news cycle and discovers stories overlooked or not even considered by the smart set who consider how their pals in the White House communications office will respond to their stories more than they care about getting information in front of the public. Sure, Isikoff did the reporting, but his editors and publishers held the political and media establishment’s false construct of propriety in higher regard than their readers’ right to know. They respected the opinions of their friends at Washington cocktail parties more than the intelligence of their readers. Yes, it was Newsweek’s story, and they killed it. It was Drudge’s scoop, and he changed the world with it. And now Newsweek is dead, and earlier this year the Drudge Report set a record with over one billion page views in a month. Yes, that’s about right. http://bit.ly/NewsweekScoop 2.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Online Media and the 2016 US Presidential Election
    Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Faris, Robert M., Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler. 2017. Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society Research Paper. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33759251 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA AUGUST 2017 PARTISANSHIP, Robert Faris Hal Roberts PROPAGANDA, & Bruce Etling Nikki Bourassa DISINFORMATION Ethan Zuckerman Yochai Benkler Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper is the result of months of effort and has only come to be as a result of the generous input of many people from the Berkman Klein Center and beyond. Jonas Kaiser and Paola Villarreal expanded our thinking around methods and interpretation. Brendan Roach provided excellent research assistance. Rebekah Heacock Jones helped get this research off the ground, and Justin Clark helped bring it home. We are grateful to Gretchen Weber, David Talbot, and Daniel Dennis Jones for their assistance in the production and publication of this study. This paper has also benefited from contributions of many outside the Berkman Klein community. The entire Media Cloud team at the Center for Civic Media at MIT’s Media Lab has been essential to this research.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise of Talk Radio and Its Impact on Politics and Public Policy
    Mount Rushmore: The Rise of Talk Radio and Its Impact on Politics and Public Policy Brian Asher Rosenwald Wynnewood, PA Master of Arts, University of Virginia, 2009 Bachelor of Arts, University of Pennsylvania, 2006 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Virginia August, 2015 !1 © Copyright 2015 by Brian Asher Rosenwald All Rights Reserved August 2015 !2 Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to the many people without whom this project would not have been possible. First, a huge thank you to the more than two hundred and twenty five people from the radio and political worlds who graciously took time from their busy schedules to answer my questions. Some of them put up with repeated follow ups and nagging emails as I tried to develop an understanding of the business and its political implications. They allowed me to keep most things on the record, and provided me with an understanding that simply would not have been possible without their participation. When I began this project, I never imagined that I would interview anywhere near this many people, but now, almost five years later, I cannot imagine the project without the information gleaned from these invaluable interviews. I have been fortunate enough to receive fellowships from the Fox Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, which made it far easier to complete this dissertation. I am grateful to be a part of the Fox family, both because of the great work that the program does, but also because of the terrific people who work at Fox.
    [Show full text]
  • Download File
    Tow Center for Digital Journalism CONSERVATIVE A Tow/Knight Report NEWSWORK A Report on the Values and Practices of Online Journalists on the Right Anthony Nadler, A.J. Bauer, and Magda Konieczna Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Introduction 7 Boundaries and Tensions Within the Online Conservative News Field 15 Training, Standards, and Practices 41 Columbia Journalism School Conservative Newswork 3 Executive Summary Through much of the 20th century, the U.S. news diet was dominated by journalism outlets that professed to operate according to principles of objectivity and nonpartisan balance. Today, news outlets that openly proclaim a political perspective — conservative, progressive, centrist, or otherwise — are more central to American life than at any time since the first journalism schools opened their doors. Conservative audiences, in particular, express far less trust in mainstream news media than do their liberal counterparts. These divides have contributed to concerns of a “post-truth” age and fanned fears that members of opposing parties no longer agree on basic facts, let alone how to report and interpret the news of the day in a credible fashion. Renewed popularity and commercial viability of openly partisan media in the United States can be traced back to the rise of conservative talk radio in the late 1980s, but the expansion of partisan news outlets has accelerated most rapidly online. This expansion has coincided with debates within many digital newsrooms. Should the ideals journalists adopted in the 20th century be preserved in a digital news landscape? Or must today’s news workers forge new relationships with their publics and find alternatives to traditional notions of journalistic objectivity, fairness, and balance? Despite the centrality of these questions to digital newsrooms, little research on “innovation in journalism” or the “future of news” has explicitly addressed how digital journalists and editors in partisan news organizations are rethinking norms.
    [Show full text]
  • The 2020 Election 2 Contents
    Covering the Coverage The 2020 Election 2 Contents 4 Foreword 29 Us versus him Kyle Pope Betsy Morais and Alexandria Neason 5 Why did Matt Drudge turn on August 10, 2020 Donald Trump? Bob Norman 37 The campaign begins (again) January 29, 2020 Kyle Pope August 12, 2020 8 One America News was desperate for Trump’s approval. 39 When the pundits paused Here’s how it got it. Simon van Zuylen–Wood Andrew McCormick Summer 2020 May 27, 2020 47 Tuned out 13 The story has gotten away from Adam Piore us Summer 2020 Betsy Morais and Alexandria Neason 57 ‘This is a moment for June 3, 2020 imagination’ Mychal Denzel Smith, Josie Duffy 22 For Facebook, a boycott and a Rice, and Alex Vitale long, drawn-out reckoning Summer 2020 Emily Bell July 9, 2020 61 How to deal with friends who have become obsessed with 24 As election looms, a network conspiracy theories of mysterious ‘pink slime’ local Mathew Ingram news outlets nearly triples in size August 25, 2020 Priyanjana Bengani August 4, 2020 64 The only question in news is ‘Will it rate?’ Ariana Pekary September 2, 2020 3 66 Last night was the logical end 92 The Doociness of America point of debates in America Mark Oppenheimer Jon Allsop October 29, 2020 September 30, 2020 98 How careful local reporting 68 How the media has abetted the undermined Trump’s claims of Republican assault on mail-in voter fraud voting Ian W. Karbal Yochai Benkler November 3, 2020 October 2, 2020 101 Retire the election needles 75 Catching on to Q Gabriel Snyder Sam Thielman November 4, 2020 October 9, 2020 102 What the polls show, and the 78 We won’t know what will happen press missed, again on November 3 until November 3 Kyle Pope Kyle Paoletta November 4, 2020 October 15, 2020 104 How conservative media 80 E.
    [Show full text]
  • Citizen Breitbart Polarizing and Profane, Andrew Breitbart Is Fast Becoming the Most Powerful Right-Wing Force on the Web by STEVE ONEY
    ´+$>&!7¨ ´+$>&!7¨ PROFILE Citizen Breitbart Polarizing and profane, Andrew Breitbart is fast becoming the most powerful right-wing force on the Web BY STEVE ONEY ndrew breitbart sits in an Aeron chair at an iMac com- puter gazing out the sliding glass door of his Los Angeles home office. On the patio, a hulaA hoop and a portable basketball rim await his children’s return from school. Breitbart, 41, dressed on this late-winter day in his standard work uniform of a dirty oxford-cloth shirt and grungy khaki shorts, looks more like a surf bum than one of the most divisive figures in Amer- ica’s political and culture wars. Then his BlackBerry rings. The woman at the other end of the line, conservative fulminator Ann Coulter, is among Breitbart’s staunchest allies, and they soon are engaged in a spirited at- tack on liberals. “Their entire structure is writhing in diseased agony on the side of the road, and they don’t even realize it,” Breitbart says. But the left isn’t the only object of disdain. “I’m sick of this effete GOP nothing sandwich,” he adds, grow- ing more animated. “As long as everyone is so pristine and socially registered, we’re going to lose.” Shortly before signing off, Breitbart says, “The second I realized I liked being hated more than I liked being liked—that’s when the game began.” It’s a game he plays extraordinarily well. Breitbart has become the Web’s most com- bative conservative impresario—part new- media mogul, part Barnumesque scamp.
    [Show full text]
  • An Emerging Safe Haven for Housing Discrimination Jeffrey M
    Loyola Consumer Law Review Volume 19 | Issue 2 Article 5 2006 Cyberspace: An Emerging Safe Haven for Housing Discrimination Jeffrey M. Sussman Follow this and additional works at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/lclr Part of the Consumer Protection Law Commons Recommended Citation Jeffrey M. Sussman Cyberspace: An Emerging Safe Haven for Housing Discrimination, 19 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 194 (2006). Available at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/lclr/vol19/iss2/5 This Student Article is brought to you for free and open access by LAW eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Loyola Consumer Law Review by an authorized administrator of LAW eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT ARTICLE Cyberspace: An Emerging Safe Haven for Housing Discrimination By Jeffrey M. Sussman* I. Introduction By its nature, the Internet facilitates relatively unregulated communication between strangers. In the abstract, many websites are like a newspaper's classified section. They take postings created by individuals and facilitate their availability to third parties. This arti- cle looks at whether websites, such as Craigslist1, that function as a medium for these listings, are liable for any discriminatory content they host. Specifically, this article argues that current legislation provides immunity for websites that host advertisements in violation of the Fair Housing Act ("FHA"). 2 This article will demonstrate that even though newspapers are liable for discriminatory housing post- ings within their classified sections, the identical postings on their websites would not pose any resultant liability. Part II of this article will discuss the prevalence of discrimina- tory housing advertisements posted on the Internet and introduce the principal legislation governing these advertisements and the policies and procedures of those websites that commonly host them.
    [Show full text]
  • Letter to Facebook, Inc
    May 23, 2016 Hon. John Thune, Chairman Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation United States Senate 512 Dirksen Senate Building Washington, DC 20510 Dear Chairman Thune: We appreciated the opportunity to meet with you and your staff last week about the concerns raised in your letter to Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) CEO Mark Zuckerberg on May 10, 2016, and want to supplement those discussions with this written response. This letter highlights Facebook’s goals as a platform, the results of our investigation into allegations of political bias in the Trending Topics feature, and our plans for the future of the feature. I. Overview Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. To serve that mission, we seek to operate a platform open to all ideas. In 12 years, the Facebook community has grown to include more than 1.6 billion people of every background and ideology—from conservative to liberal and everything in between. Maintaining and growing this global community depends on everyone on Facebook feeling comfortable sharing what is important to them. Our Trending Topics feature is a recent innovation designed to connect people to topics that people are talking about on Facebook. This is in addition to (and separate from) an individual’s News Feed, which is the central way that most people discover information and connect with others on Facebook. Suppressing political content or preventing people from seeing what matters most to them is directly contrary to Facebook’s mission and our business objectives. When anonymous allegations of political bias recently surfaced in relation to Facebook’s Trending Topics feature, we immediately launched an investigation to determine if anyone violated the integrity of the feature or acted in ways that are inconsistent with Facebook’s policies and mission.
    [Show full text]
  • Delegate Research Information
    MSC 62nd Student Conference on National Affairs “Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: Securing the Homeland” Texas A&M University Delegate Research Information Round Table #15 “Good Morning America: Deciphering the Hidden Agendas of the Media” Facilitator: Rolando Santos ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This delegate research information is not intended to be a comprehensive assessment of your assigned round table topic but rather a starting point to help launch your own personal investigations into the various associated issues. It is encouraged, if not expected, that your policy proposals will be inclusive of aspects pertaining to your round table topic that are not covered in this research compilation. You, your facilitator, your round table host, and your fellow roundtable delegates are all responsible for crafting a policy proposal that takes this into consideration. Example Policy Proposal - SCONA 61 Winner ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: The Honorable Susan Rice Office Held: National Security Advisor From: Spencer Allen, Christopher Beveridge, John Breland, Karch Calkins, Johnny Childers, Rachel Clink, Zachariah Fares, Brian Fuentes, Adel Hussain, Sebastian King, Isaac Lee, Emily Otto, Joni Taylor Facilitator: COL Chris Albus Subject: Counteracting the Allure of Jihad Date: 20 February 2016 Introduction The allure of Jihad is a growing national security problem. There is an increased ability of terrorist groups to inspire those living within the U.S. to commit acts of domestic terrorism. This complex problem requires the development of a counter-narrative policy, based on American values, to limit the allure of Jihad. This is done by partnering with the Muslim community and interest groups and initiating a proactive, timely, and relevant informational campaign.
    [Show full text]
  • Stuart Stevens, Romney's Chief Strategist and Svengali, Was Driving to Oxford on a Warm Evening in Late April
    Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy Discussion Paper Series #D-80, September 2013 Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus? Searching for a better way to cover a campaign By Peter Hamby Shorenstein Center Fellow, Spring 2013 CNN Political Reporter Research Assistant: Karly Schledwitz Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Stuart’s lament Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and all-purpose svengali, was driving to Oxford on a warm evening in late April. A sixth-generation Mississippian whose first job in politics was an internship for then-congressman Thad Cochran in the 1970s, Stevens had just flown in from Los Angeles, where he is developing a television project for HBO, to appear on yet another panel looking back on the 2012 campaign. The latest one was being hosted by an old pal, the reporter and author Curtis Wilkie, a veteran of eight presidential campaigns who now teaches journalism at the University of Mississippi. Stevens has never been shy about discussing—or decrying—the state of the political news media. Almost every reporter who covered the 2012 race can recall waking up to find a late-night email from Stevens bemoaning a story, or tweet, about Romney. A number of his compatriots on the Romney campaign, including communications director Gail Gitcho, spokeswoman Andrea Saul, and Deputy Campaign Manager Katie Packer Gage, were also known to fire off barbed emails to reporters about tweets they saw as silly or unfair. Stevens’ missives were often more whimsical or esoteric than mean, but it was clear he harbored some deep resentments about the press and its treatment of his candidate.
    [Show full text]
  • The Drudge Case: a Look at Issues in Cyberspace Defamation
    Washington Law Review Volume 73 Number 3 7-1-1998 The Drudge Case: A Look at Issues in Cyberspace Defamation Robert M. O'Neil Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr Part of the Torts Commons Recommended Citation Robert M. O'Neil, The Drudge Case: A Look at Issues in Cyberspace Defamation, 73 Wash. L. Rev. 623 (1998). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol73/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at UW Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington Law Review by an authorized editor of UW Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Copyright 0 1998 by Washington Law Review Association THE DRUDGE CASE: A LOOK AT ISSUES IN CYBERSPACE DEFAMATION* Robert M. O'Neilt In the days following Newsweek's January 1998 decision to defer publication of an expos6 of President Clinton's alleged affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, attention focused on the medium where the story first appeared: Matt Drudge's online gossip column, The Drudge Report.' Though his postings on this issue seem to have been substantially accurate, Mr. Drudge has recently been sued for defamation2 because an earlier Report carried a story of a quite different sort, in which even he conceded there were some flaws.3 That lawsuit provides a vehicle through which to explore a fascinating array of legal issues unique to the rapidly emerging field of online defamation. No current controversy better illustrates the novelties of free expression in cyberspace4 than the Drudge lawsuit.5 The facts of the Drudge case are as follows.
    [Show full text]
  • The Clinton/Lewinsky Story How Accurate? How Fair?
    The Clinton/Lewinsky Story How Accurate? How Fair? Project for Excellence in Journalism 1900 M Street NW Suite 210 | Washington DC 2009 202-293-7394 | www.journalism.org Overall Summary Contrary to White House accusations, those doing the bulk of the original reporting did not ferry false leaks and fabrications into coverage of the Clinton/Lewinsky story. But in some important cases, the press leaned on the suspicions of investigators that did not hold up and downplayed the denials of the accused, according to a new study. The findings of the study, conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists, raise questions about whether the press always maintained adequate skepticism about its sources. There were occasions, moreover, when the press got ahead of the facts in its basic reporting. Others then used that work to engage in sometimes reckless speculation and propaganda. Overall, while the initial reporting of certain well-known stories, such as the blue dress, were proven right, and none was made out of whole cloth, it is an oversimplification to say the press has been vindicated. The study, conducted under the supervision of journalist Jim Doyle, former special assistant to the Watergate Special Prosecutors, was an attempt to discern the nature of the press coverage to date by examining several major threads of the story and comparing them to the Starr Report and its supporting evidentiary material. The goal was to make a disciplined and detailed examination of the coverage in order to balance accusations on both sides that the reporting has been proven substantiated or that it had been manipulated by misleading leaks.
    [Show full text]
  • Sidney Blumenthal V. Matt Drudge and America Online, Inc
    IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL and JACQUELINE JORDAN BLUMENTHAL, Plaintiffs, v. MATT DRUDGE And AMERICA ONLINE, INC., Defendants. Civil Action No. 97-1968 (PLF) OPINION This is a defamation case revolving around a statement published on the Internet by defendant Matt Drudge. On August 10, 1997, the following was available to all having access to the Internet: The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that top GOP operatives who feel there is a double- standard of only reporting republican shame believe they are holding an ace card: new White House recruit Sidney Blumenthal has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up. The accusations are explosive. There are court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife, one influential republican, who demanded anonymity, tells the DRUDGE REPORT. If they begin to use (DON) Sipple and his problems against us, against the Republican Party ....to show hypocrisy, Blumenthal would become fair game. Wasn't it Clinton who signed the Violence Against Women Act? (There goes the budget deal honeymoon.) One White House source, also requesting anonymity, says the Blumenthal wife-beating allegation is a pure fiction that has been created by Clinton enemies. (The First Lady) would not have brought him in if he had this in his background, assures the well-placed staffer. This story about Blumenthal has been in circulation for years. Last month President Clinton named Sidney Blumenthal as Assistant to the President as part of the Communications Team. He's brought in to work on communications strategy, special projects themeing -- a newly created position.
    [Show full text]