Ann-cestuous Journalism
One constant bugaboo of Matt Drudge’s is the One Big Happy Inbred Family known as the media industry. Reporters “sleep” with their sources, literally and figuratively. This too-close alliance compromises the quality of news reportage one way or another…but is perhaps unavoidable.
Independent journalists, perhaps, must lean even more heavily on allies than their inbred cousins in the mainstream press. Just as Matt Drudge has acquired a stable of sources, he owes his success (and survival during a $30 million lawsuit) to a certain stable of allies. The most-utilized ally seems to be Ann Coulter, who gets her usual dose of book PR on Drudge this week.
However you feel about Ann Coulter, she’s mediagenic. She’s unafraid to push the envelope to the limits of social acceptability. Someone who states in an interview that she’s never seen anyone enjoy their husbands’ death so much as some 9/11 widows is not someone who lives in fear of fallout. Not only does she say what others are afraid to say, she says it how they would never say it. But what would happen if she crossed a line that alienated even many supporters – including Matt Drudge?
Ann is one of Matt’s most frequent radio guests. He diligently plugs her projects. When Time posted a front-cover shot of Ann’s legs (she was somewhere in there as well), we heard it on Drudge first. Ditto when a syndicate refused to print an edition of her column. He even posted a pic of a flying pie headed toward her head. Yes, Ann Coulter is news and Matt Drudge reports on the news. But like anyone else, Matt Drudge is as much arbiter as he is reporter. At what point does a reporter of news become an arbiter of news? And how do his allegiances affect the balance?
The friendship between Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter goes a way back. A video of a 1998 National Press Club luncheon shows Coulter was one of two “guests of the speaker” invited to hear Matt’s keynote remarks. That was around the time she told the Washington Post that Drudge was shy around women and once went to a pool with every inch of skin covered. If Modest Matt found that embarrassing, it didn’t stop him from listing her among his friends in Radar back in ‘03. He also survived being dubbed Ann’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in her 2004 interview with the New York Observer.
Relationships count in journalism. Take other friends/allies, whose influence on Drudge outweighs their news relevance. Matt doesn’t cover the book industry save for hot new tomes on politics or pop culture. He was among the last to link to stories on James Frey and Kaavya Viswanathan. So he certainly wouldn’t have issued an original report on a book of poetry, if not for his rapport with Camille Paglia. Likewise, Matt’s short-lived TV show extended Lucianne Goldberg’s fame beyond her 15 minutes as Linda Tripp’s confidante – and well beyond the dish-loving literary agent’s importance. No matter how genuine his irritation at journalists rubbing each other’s backs at parties, Matt Drudge can’t possibly keep his own hands clean other people’s germs – no matter how many Lady Macbeth moments he has in the bathroom sink.
It’s the era of relationship marketing: merchant-customer, vendor-vendor, and journalist-source. Who has your back, and who has scratched it? Whom can you count on to scratch that spot next time it itches? The gossip industry is based on quid pro quo information currency: often something appears on Page Six not because the writers find it particularly newsworthy, but because the source had a scoop on someone else.
Ann’s outrageous hyperbole is her shtick. It’s what people expect from her. But might there ever come a time when it is advantageous for Drudge to distance himself from Coulter – at least in the media? And if the time came, would he do it? And how would he do it? Should he do it now? Those questions could haunt anyone in the mainstream media, but they’re especially provocative for Drudge. With no bosses or industry monitors over him, the only people he has to answer to are his allies and his readers. And there’s no conflict between those two groups…for now.
by RegoPark - 8:14 pm
June 12th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Hi again.
First, don’t be confused: every mainstream reporter *is* an arbiter of news, regardless of which publication he/she writes for and what the editors/publishers want. Every single story, no matter how bland and straightforward, is the result of the reporter’s judgement that it is news at all, what aspects of it are to be focused on or not, what goes in the lead, who will be quoted first, second, not at all, etc. There is arbiter bias in every word and thought in the reporter’s article, and maybe it’s subtle with a straight news story but it’s there. It’s not so subtle when you go anywhere near a feature or anything other than hard straight fact-reporting (which hardly exists anymore). Puff pieces; from the big things like how one presents a celebrity or politician to the most minor little things, like saying so-and-so “quipped” as opposed to “sniffed” or “demured” or “barked” or simply “said”. Having been in the mainstream press I now go the opposite way of conventional U.S. wisdom which says the mainstream ought to be “unbiased.” I much prefer knowing outright what ax a reporter’s got to grind than reading it between the lines while posing as just the facts, and I prefer knowing that Drudge and Coulter are friends than him pretending they are not but featuring her as though it was just an unbiased move on his part. Same with those he doesn’t like; it’s better to know. And often, free of trying to make it look like something it is not, the conversations that result between Drudge and a guest he has on the radio will turn out far more informative and newsworthy than anything “unbiased” in the press anyway.
On your question regarding whether Drudge would ever distance himself, at least in the media, from Coulter: Very doubtful. Partly because he is a libertarian; partly because no doubt there are strong bonds among people who make it in the alternative media but have had to fightfightfight to survive and who at times have become targets for destruction by the mainstream with seemingly literally no one out there in the media (or the public, though that might not be the case) on their side, the feeling they are standing alone during all these very public attacks and attempts to destroy their ability to keep their own voices in the mix. Drudge also has little problem going against what everyone else in the mainstream and conservative outlets are saying (again probably because he’s more libertarian than anything, and also because he knows how misleading and outright wrong and deliberately personally destructive the mainstream press can be) — take, for example, his continued defense of Michael Jackson’s right to have a fair trial and not be judged by the media circus but the facts and the reliability of the accuser and his family, etc. And Drudge had this positioni throughout the trial, long before anyone thought Jackson might actually walk.
So no. I can’t imagine that given all of the above, combined with whatever further personal fondness and bonds exist between Drudge and Coulter, that he would distance himself publicly in the media due to something she said (whether he agreed or not). Whether she would ever do something privately that crossed a line in Drudge’s mind and world is another matter. Say, she did something he found grotesquely an invasion of his privacy, for example, and then attacked him privately based on assumptions made from this invasion of privacy. That is really the only kind of scenario where I can think he might end not just the private friendship but also might begin distancing himself from her in the media too — especially if she were to take such attacks against him public. But I’m really really stretching here for any scenerio at all. …
June 12th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Thanks again for your insightful feedback — that’s pretty much what I’ve concluded. Drudge did exactly what I thought he’d do last night: AC was on for an entire hour.
June 19th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Now I’ll make a totally unprofessional observation: Drudge’s obvious personal obsession with Coulter makes me want to barf. It’s like being subjected to the infatuated person’s insertion of the person he’s infatuated with into every conceivable conversation. The infatuated person can’t help it; he finds the person he’s infatuated with so fascinating and doesn’t know or won’t otherwise act on his personal obsession with this person. (It’s more than a professional infatuation). But the rest of us notice every single uncalled-for insertion of that person’s name into every conversation. And that’s what it’s like with Drudge regarding Coulter. At some point you want to barf, tell him to do something about it already, whatever, but please just stop inserting her into every radio program dialogue/whatever.