Yesterday’s readers of the Huffington Post opened up their hyperlinks to find a “Lieberman Shocker” by author and journalist Gabriel Rotello:
Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman stunned Washington today by announcing that if he loses the general election in November, he will refuse to vacate his seat in the Senate.
“I owe it to the nation,” the Senator told reporters while quail hunting with Dick Cheney and a heavily bandaged Karl Rove. “If a gaggle of voters in a small, mostly wooded state think they can polarize our entire political system, they don’t know this Joe.”
Before you line up to watch Joe escorted out of his Senate office by the Secret Service – or hunting with Cheney and Rove – the blog entry is a rather subtle strain of satire…one that not all of the posted commentors caught. Know the ratio of headlines an average news consumer reads to the full stories that get read?
Neither do I.
Kinda scary.
Even more so because the front page of the Huffington Post blares the “will not vacate” headline” without any hint of what’s really inside.
Some of you might recall my shocking report last spring that MSNBC had just acquired both the Drudge Report and Gawker Media. I guess US Weekly & World Report would be a reliable enough medium – if, in fact, there were such a publication on the market. Yet even in its current existential state, its brand recognition was such that readers trusted it enough not to click the provided hyperlink and see for themselves. And getting hitched to another Internet personality is plausible enough. Especially for anyone unfamiliar with the “Matt Drudge Ignores Me” running gags of Gawker’s Jessica Coen or the blog’s constant, annoying allusion to the now-debunked gay rumors. Hell, if I read somewhere that Matt and his “bride” bought a vacation home in Akureyri, Iceland, I might finally hop on an Icelandair package deal to take in the aurora borealis and keep up with the Drudges. If they found a place to watch hell freeze over together – I’m there, dude. I just wish that, like Drudge, I could afford a power publicist like April Fools.
Undoubtedly, some people who read this space will see only the first sentence of the last paragraph and go on thinking Matt’s sold out to MSMBC. Can we blame them?
The truth is that news is consumed by so many eyeballs – fleetingly, at that – who don’t really understand or process the context of the content they’re reading. And we’re all guilty of this on some level. Matt Drudge himself has said he only reads the first and last few paragraphs. Nor is he above pranks like mine. Back in 1998, according to Drudge Manifesto, the Drudge Report posted the following flash:
There are late reports tonight that a massive asteroid is believed to be on a direct collision course with planet Earth!
MSNBC is reporting exclusively that the U.S. Government has been secretly preparing for a possible asteroid/Earth collision for more than a year.
Stunned viewers were instructed not to be alarmed: there is a course of action well under way inside the highest office of the land.
The Pentagon has been secretly planning a joint venture with Russian military officials, MSNBC revealed, with plans to transport a team of multinational experts via space shuttle and space station to the asteroid.
The team will drill large holes into it, fill them with nuclear warheads and detonate the asteroid before it can reach Earth.
A massive asteroid is believed to be on a direct collision course…President Beck is preparing to address the world on this very serious and developing situation…
(Still with me on this one?)
The DRUDGE REPORT has been briefed on the details of a new movie set for release – a movie that features the freshman all-news cable channel MSNBC acting out phony reports of a catastrophic asteroid hit..”
Matt goes on to report the blatant MSNBC logos and plugs throughout the movie Deep Impact, in which the protagonist is a MSNBC reporter. Rather than a prank, Drudge claims he was making a point about the blurring line between showbiz and news reportage. Oh — just so you know, we haven’t elected any President named Beck.
Less funny was the following anonymous rogue posting on various newsgroups: I’m sure many of you watched the recent taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show where her guest was Tommy Hilfiger, in which Hilfiger supposedly told Oprah his clothes were designed for white people and was kicked off. In fact, the two never even met, let alone spoke on her show. Hilfiger experienced some significant fallout, even though Oprah made a point of publicly dismissing the rumor on-air.
So where does the Lieberman ruse fit into all of this? At the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy, this could carry some serious consequences for hapless old Joe. When I saw that my readers seriously believed my joke on Drudge, I made a point of straightening everyone out: I contacted comment posters, posted an appropriate entry on the blog, and e-mailed apologies to Matt Drudge and Jessica Coen. Unlike them, however, Joe Lieberman is running for public office and a reputation-threatening urban legend is waiting to happen. I do hope that now that Rotello’s had his fun, he makes some limp effort to counteract this virally marketed misinformation.
“This differs from an April fool’s gag in one important respect,” one Huffington reader posted. “April Fool’s gags are funny.”
Okay, maybe it’s a little funny…but a little proactive act of responsibility never hurt anyone. This one can.
by RegoPark - 5:29 am
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