T A B L E__T A L K Journalists: What won't you do to get a story? Define your limits in Table Talk's Media area - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Hollywoodland By Catherine Seipp Why people hate the way they're portrayed in the media (01/16/97) Magazine won't let princess rest in peace By Deborah Mitchell Did Elle publish a fake conversation with Di and Dodi? (01/15/97) Cult of personality, without the personality By Tom McNichol Follow the Maximum Leader! N. Korea's new spin doctors off to shaky start (01/14/97) The People are always wrong By David Futrelle Ed Koch jazzes up and dumbs down democracy on the new, improved "People's Court" (01/13/97) How I learned to stop worrying and love Gloria Allred By Frank Sanello She may be the Queen of Overexposure, but hard-charging feminist attorney Gloria Allred is on the side of the (loudmouthed) angels (01/12/97) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVES

BY JOE CONASON | Few controversies illustrate the degeneration of journalistic values as starkly as the case of Internet gossip Matt Drudge. As he faces trial this spring in a well-publicized $30 million libel suit, Drudge has been upheld as a symbol of freedom by an odd assemblage of pundits that includes Susan Estrich, Michael Kinsley and David Horowitz. While acknowledging the rather noticeable flaws of Drudge-style "reporting," these prominent fans appear to believe that he and America Online, the electronic distributors of the Drudge Report, ought to be exempt from the strictures of libel law. What they are suggesting, whether they know it or not, is a plunge in standards that would make the current tabloid culture seem utopian. Without the regulatory whip of libel, the Internet would become a totally free market in defamation, dragging the rest of the media down to the same level. In that debased new environment, journalists who play by the rules of accuracy and fairness will be dinosaurs. Drudge's most ardent advocates are journalists in the sense that anyone who scribbles or babbles can now adopt that title. Actual journalists -- meaning those who stake their reputations on accuracy and fairness -- know that libel law is the moral bulwark that protects their profession from the likes of Drudge. Most serious journalists would no more chuck libel law than lawyers or doctors would dispense with the regulatory structures that punish the charlatans and quacks who pretend to practice their professions. The Drudge "exclusive" that prompted the lawsuit by White House aide Sidney Blumenthal is a perfect example of what libel law is meant to discourage and, if necessary, punish. On Aug. 10, 1997, the Drudge Report opened by alluding to an investigative piece in Mother Jones magazine that quoted two ex-wives of Republican consultant Don Sipple, accusing him, on the record, of having beaten them. The Sipple exposé "could be unsettling long-held establishment secrets" in Washington, warned Drudge. "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," Drudge wrote. He then quoted an "influential Republican who demanded anonymity" as saying that "there are court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife." Finally, he cited another anonymous source, purportedly in the White House, to provide a denial. The completely groundless lies about Blumenthal and his wife, Jacqueline Jordan Blumenthal (both of whom I've known for 20 years), were in circulation for a full day -- and almost made the big time on network news -- before Drudge withdrew them with a rather bland apology. After the Blumenthals decided to sue, Drudge became a culture hero among conservatives, who regard him as a pioneering news hound victimized by a presidential vendetta. The fact that he is a perfect symbol of declining literacy and the "dumbing down" that otherwise worries conservatives bothers his fans not at all. He is a habitual Clinton-basher and therefore a Republican sweetheart. Horowitz, the right-wing Salon columnist and author, has set up a Matt Drudge Defense Fund that will provide Drudge free legal counsel. Meanwhile, Roger Ailes, chief executive of the Fox News Channel, is reportedly auditioning Drudge for his own TV broadcast. There is considerable irony in Drudge being courted by Ailes, who complains bitterly about inaccuracy and bias in the media, and has frequently threatened suit against reporters who wrote unfavorably about him. But Drudge can boast of liberal supporters, too. Slate editor Michael Kinsley has urged leniency toward Drudge, whom he once tried to hire to edit his magazine's news digest. And Los Angeles lawyer Susan Estrich, who writes a column for AOL and USA Today, has taken to the airwaves (and the pages of Slate) to protest the alleged infringement of Drudge's First Amendment rights by the Blumenthals. These fans seem to feel that Drudge is worthy of some special dispensation as an outlaw who symbolizes freedom on the Net. Estrich gushes that he is valuable because his column tells her "what insiders know" and is "democratizing access to information." To each her own, but it's all beside the point. He doesn't have the right to defame because his words appear on a screen instead of a sheet of paper, or even because he makes some poor shlub feel hip. Estrich protests that Drudge did nothing worse than publish "accurate reporting about an inaccurate rumor." But the word "rumor" appears nowhere in his copy, and poor, bumbling Drudge has since admitted that he made no effort to check the vile whispers of his GOP cronies. He didn't even ask to see those supposed "court records"! Even worse, there is reason to suspect that Drudge lied about his supposed attempts to contact the Blumenthals for comment -- since he didn't seem to know that they are listed in the Washington, D.C., residential telephone directory. Anyway, his fans say, Drudge isn't really a journalist. Drudge himself is rather coy about whether he considers himself a journalist or not: When he wants to violate the rules of fairness and accuracy with impunity, he says he isn't a journalist and doesn't have to follow those rules; when he wants to protect the sources who burned him on the Blumenthal tale, he demands to be treated like a journalist with full privileges of confidentiality. The hard question that must be faced by Drudge fans, especially those who claim to be journalists themselves, is how dreadful American journalism would be if their hero's standards prevailed -- as he predicts they eventually will. Referring to his critics at a forum last November, Drudge scoffed that "they just don't know what to do with (the Drudge Report). But they're going to have to start accepting it." Apparently this means accepting unedited, unverified, politically motivated slanders and hoping for a retraction later if they're proved wrong. Behold the shining future of the Net, as envisioned by Matt Drudge. The only barrier to that dismal prospect is the regulatory structure of libel law. To a greater extent than ever, journalism is a commodity -- and its producers and distributors (whether insects like Drudge or giants like AOL) are no different from other businesses that don't want to be regulated. Fast-food franchisers dream of a world without restaurant inspectors or the Food and Drug Administration, but what else stands between the public and a billion bacteria-laden hamburgers? And while Drudge obviously prefers an unregulated Internet, what force other than the law can curb his bumbling propensity to defame -- or AOL's urge to profit from it? SALON | Jan. 19, 1998 Joe Conason is the political editor at the New York Observer.