The Matt Drudge primary
How professional political operatives secretly control the news you read about the 2008 campaign. Hint: It involves the Drudge Report.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected since it was originally published.
By Michael Scherer
Read more: Republican Party, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Politics, Drudge Report, News, Michael Scherer, 2008 election, Mitt Romney
Photo: Laura Farr/AdMedia
Photo composite of Matt Drudge.
May 14, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- John McCain's "Bomb Iran" scandal almost never happened.
The reporters covering the Murrells Inlet, S.C., rally last month, where McCain jokingly parodied the old Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann" with the words "Bomb Iran," didn't think the joke was news. Only one writer, Scott Harper, from the local Georgetown Times, mentioned it in his story, and he relegated it to the 17th paragraph. "I didn't think Jay Leno would be talking about it," he said.
The Associated Press reporter on-site ignored the joke altogether, and focused his story on McCain's pledge to brief the public about Iraq on a biweekly basis if elected president. The reporter for the Sun-News, a local Myrtle Beach newspaper, also led with the press conference pledge and left out the joke. But then someone -- we don't know who, exactly -- sent a carefully edited video of the joke to Matt Drudge, who runs the most popular news blog in America and the premier outlet for anonymous political leaks from Republican insiders.
The next day, the Drudge Report headline blared, "McCain Sings: 'Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran.'" Hours later, the Associated Press echoed Drudge by sending a new story over the wire, headlined "McCain Jokes About Bombing." By then the news was everywhere. Leno, Jon Stewart, each major television network and the big newspapers eventually mentioned the clip. That afternoon, McCain was caught on defense at a campaign appearance in Las Vegas, telling reporters to "lighten up and get a life."
As news events go, the "Bomb Iran" episode was surprisingly typical for the 2008 campaign. It resulted from an anonymous leak, most likely from a rival campaign, rather than the shoe-leather reporting of independent journalists. It was, in the lingo of the campaign trail, an "oppo dump," apparently compiled with the help of one of the vast, secretive propaganda machines housed in each of the major campaigns. In recent months, such invisible releases of information have often dominated the news cycle and have become ubiquitous for reporters covering the candidates. Official e-mails from campaigns regularly arrive in reporter in boxes with subject lines like "n/a," or "not for attribution." Unsigned white papers are delivered with damning facts about opponents' fundraising reports. Information is passed along by senior campaign officials in hushed tones on the telephone, only after the reporter has sworn never to reveal the source.
Both reporters and the campaigns benefit from this thriving black market of information, as does the public, in many cases, because noteworthy facts about the candidates are widely disseminated. But the growing profusion of campaign-driven stories has also sidelined traditional on-the-ground journalism, while at the same time misleading the public about the true source of information. Though reporters, and blogs like the Drudge Report, take credit for scoops, the news of the day is more often than not produced by the invisible hand of one campaign or another. Journalists long ago learned how to play the game. "Reporters will often call and ask proactively, 'What kind of dirt do you have for me?'" said one senior official at a presidential campaign who asked not to be identified.
Most of the time, the fingerprints of opposition research shops are untraceable. The first reporter to note the $400 haircuts of John Edwards, the Politico's Ben Smith, would not reveal to Salon whether he uncovered the fact himself from financial filings or had received a leak from a rival campaign. Similarly, Rick Klein, the senior political reporter for ABC News, declined a request to reveal how he uncovered last week the 13-year-old Planned Parenthood contributions of Mitt Romney's wife. Both stories may have resulted from impressive investigative reporting or from oppo dumps selectively leaked as a package of facts, gift-wrapped and tied with a bow.
In other cases, reporters do attempt to disclose the behind-the-scenes machinations that lead to news. When the Politico's Jonathan Martin reported last week that Rudy Giuliani had given money to a pro-choice group in the 1990s, he noted that the information had come from "aides to a rival campaign." Similarly, when the Hill reported last month that Mitt Romney had spent more than $1 million on early television advertising, the reporter admitted he had not directly asked television stations for the size of the ad buy. "A rival campaign compiled the data from the stations and provided it to the Hill," wrote the reporter, Alexander Bolton.
Of course, such leaks of prepackaged stories are not new. Throughout modern American political history, presidential campaigns have spent significant amounts of money on organized efforts to dig up dirt on their rivals and shape media coverage. What has changed is the pace and profusion of stories based on opposition research, especially this early in the campaign cycle. There are now more outlets clamoring for the information than ever before, and more competition from reporters for the latest "scoop." "I think you have to recognize that there is an extraordinary amount of media interest in this campaign," said Kevin Madden, the spokesman for the Romney campaign. "You have to recognize that there is a lot of competitiveness among the media organizations."
Campaign spokespeople complain that they now spend much of their time trying to persuade reporters not to run with misleading oppo dumps produced by rival campaigns. "Considering how much time we spend batting down false stories people are spreading about us, I would say there is a little bit of an appetite," said Phil Singer, the spokesman for Hillary Clinton's campaign. A moment later he reconsidered: "To say there is a little bit of an appetite may be the understatement of the campaign."