Salon Media Circus | Hearsay rules


T A B L E_.T A L K Join the discussion of Brill's Content in the Media area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y L.A.'s battle of the books By Dwight Garner Is the Los Angeles Times Book Review the second coming of the New York Review -- or an elitist section that doesn't serve its readers? (06/18/98) Hamburger Hades By Jon Carroll Robin Cook's "Toxin" is a tale told by a hack, full of E. coli, signifying that the beef industry is the tool of Satan. Yum! (06/16/98) Content's star shortage By Harry Jaffe Media watchdog Steve Brill tried -- and failed -- to get big-name media talent on his masthead (06/12/98) Source for Kathleen Willey story sues Newsweek's Michael Isikoff By Joe Conason Julie Steele claims reporter violated explicit agreement that their conversations were off the record (06/12/98) The truism show By James Poniewozik The op-ed-ization of Jim Carrey's new flick turns its anti-TV take into a rerun (06/10/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVE		HEARSAY RULES \| PAGE 1, 2 The libel action does not seem to have taught Drudge much, for he is still waging no-check journalism. Two days before he came to Washington, Drudge moved an "exclusive" report claiming that at the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago, as President Clinton and Vernon Jordan were in a hotel room telling political consultant Dick Morris that he was fired, "Monica Lewinsky could be found only rooms away." Drudge played up the hypocrisy angle: the president canning Morris because a tabloid had outed Morris toe-sucking a hooker, while the former was supposedly trysting away with Lewinsky. Drudge's source for all this: "a close Morris associate" whom he did not name. There was one immediately obvious problem with Drudge's story: Clinton and Jordan were not the ones who gave Morris the push. As Morris tells it in his own book, after the consultant-and-the-prostitute story came out, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles confronted Morris in his hotel room and asked if the story was true. Morris confessed, and Bowles departed. Three hours later, Bowles returned to Morris' hotel room and pink-slipped him. There was no Clinton/Jordan showdown with Morris. When I challenged Drudge about this on "Crossfire," he said, "I did not check that story. Someone very close to Morris told me that story." It would have been very simple for Drudge to have looked up this episode in Morris' book. After all, if the sole source had not been correct about the Clinton-Jordan-Morris meeting, how could he or she be trusted to know that Lewinsky was down the hall awaiting a presidential visit? Drudge's response: "If this source told you the way it was presented to me, you would have run with it, also." No, I would not. No proper journalist would. After the show ended and we departed the set, Drudge told me that the "close Morris associate" had been Morris' wife. The next day I called Morris. He was familiar with the Drudge item and had discussed it with his wife. "I don't know how it could be true," he told me. "It's not accurate ... Neither of us knew who Monica Lewinsky was until January 1998. I don't know where that item came from ... The story is inaccurate." Perhaps Morris is lying and he or his wife did pass that story to Drudge. But a quick peek at Morris' book would have indicated to Drudge something was rotten. On "Crossfire," Drudge defended another of his recent items, this one claiming that vital encryption had been missing from a crashed Loral satellite involved in the alleged China missile technology-for-money scandal. Drudge acknowledged that he had based the story on one anonymous source at Loral; he had done no further reporting because "the guy seemed sincere." Do Britt Hume and Tony Snow, Fox's leading newsmen, apply similar standards to their stories? What then is a reader to make of Drudge and his material? True, Drudge's aren't the only "bombshells" that turned out to be howlers, especially in the various Clinton-gates. Yet it's hard to regard Drudge as a genuine member of the trade. The practice of journalism, at least in theory, does entail ascertaining whether a story is true or not before it is disseminated. Mistakes get made, but there is an intent to get things straight. Drudge does not bother with these rudimentary rules. He is not a journalist. He is a hearsayist. Still, he's invited on "Meet the Press" and given a weekly platform by the We Report/You Decide network. Mainstream media has been quick to criticize the Web for its anything-goes journalistic mentality. Yet that same media takes Matt Drudge seriously. What does that say about "serious" news institutions that are supposed to believe that hearsay is not enough? SALON \| June 19, 1998 David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation, is a regular contributor to Salon. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R E L A T E D_.S A L O N_.S T O R I E S Right On! In defense of Matt Drudge ... and the freedom of the Internet By David Horowitz Nov. 17, 1997 Libel suit tests the limits of freewheeling Net speech Should AOL be held legally responsible for its "take-no-prisoners" columnist? By Jonathan Broder Aug. 29, 1997 Outlaw justice Some journalists have a strange soft spot for Matt Drudge. By Joe Conason Jan. 19, 1997 T A B L E_.T A L K Matt Drudge: Fair or foul? 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