The Politico / Matt Drudge Nexus Misfires Again

4:51 am EST March 29th, 2007 | Media | 7 Comments

My colleagues at Media Matters documented Wednesday the curious synchronicty with which Politico stories are pushed on Matt Drudge’s website… even before the story is published. It’s as if someone over there is working hand-in-hand with Drudge to push these stories. The problem is, The Politico’s stories are proving so inaccurate that they must be rushing them to Drudge without getting the factcheckers to look at them.

Today’s example is this story by Ben Smith (the same guy who got the Edwards story very wrong) saying that Jesse Jackson would vote for Barack Obama. The problem is, as Smith was pushed to concede, that Jackson already put out this news… a month ago.

The Politico does it again…

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7 Responses to “The Politico / Matt Drudge Nexus Misfires Again”

  1. Jay says:
    March 29, 2007 at 9:05 am

    If the story was reported a month ago, how is it inaccurate? That’s what you’re accusing them of.

  2. Duros62 says:
    March 29, 2007 at 10:37 am

    Ok, then I question the timing.

    I liked August’s name for them; Politico-dependents.

  3. Jay says:
    March 29, 2007 at 10:43 am

    Why do you question the timing? I’m having difficulty figuring out what the gripe is here. So a Politico blogger writes that Jesse Jackson is going to vote for Barack Obama. So what?

    The Oliver says Smith was “pushed to concede” that this was already reported. Where did Smith say this was breaking news or that this was something that hadn’t been reported before? Maybe he didn’t know. It was in the NY Observer which isn’t exactly a household paper.

  4. pedromd07 says:
    March 29, 2007 at 11:47 am

    sorry jay, you’re missing the point. You forget that oliver’s “colleagues” (ahem, if you can call journalists your colleagues if you are the IT geek for a media company)are in the business of yellow journalism and muckracking.

    Ollie is simply thowing mud to see if he can get some to stick. He is back in his “maybe I can get hired by a campaign like my hero KOS” mode.

  5. Duros62 says:
    March 29, 2007 at 11:57 am

    Why do you question the timing?

    Because the story is a month old and they’re just getting around to reporting on it now.
    Even less reason for Drudge to pick it up.

    Maybe he didn’t know.

    Now that is perfectly reasonable theory.

    Fact check? Phht, why bother.

  6. Oliver Willis says:
    March 29, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    Yeah my dream is to one day be like the big kids and pretend to be a doctor in the comments of some guy’s blog.

  7. vwcat says:
    March 29, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    It’s been noticed how Smith never, ever says a bad word about Hillary and yet, this is not the first article he’s done slamming Obama.
    Actually, with these articles timing, I am wondering if the Hillary camp was involved..