This year, my annual list of the worst of political media highlights not just individuals, but the institutions that enable those individuals. The 2012 Hack List will be counting down the 10 media outlets that are hurting America over the next two days -- stay tuned! (Previous Hack List entries here, here and here.)
Shortly after noon on Nov. 6, Time's Mark Halperin posted this on Twitter: "When John Harris & I wrote 'Drudge rules our world,' we were describing what IS, not what ought to be. Doubters already proven wrong today." A few hours later Barack Obama won reelection, which I assume came as a shock to people who do get most of their news from Matt Drudge.
Here's a brief tour of 2012 as the Drudge Report covered it.
- Mitt Romney picked Condoleezza Rice as his running mate.
- Mitt Romney picked Gen. David Petraeus as his running mate.
- News that Barack Obama secretly invented a girlfriend in his book rocked the nation.
- Mitt Romney selected Tim Pawlenty as his running mate.
- A video of Barack Obama saying "I believe in redistribution" changed the course of the presidential race.
- A video of Barack Obama speaking to black people in 2007 changed the course of the presidential race.
- A shocking late-October bombshell announcement from Donald Trump changed the course of the presidential race.
- Jake Gyllenhaal endorsed Mitt Romney.
- Barack Obama accepted campaign donations from Osama bin Laden.
- "Vanloads of Somalians" committed voter fraud in Ohio.
- Most national public opinion polls of the presidential race were decidedly inaccurate until "unskewed" to represent a more Republican electorate.
- The exception: Polls from Rasmussen.
- Election Day exit polls were initially a "BOOM FOR O" and then, strangely, simply "tight," and then they ceased to exist entirely.
Here are a couple things you might have missed this campaign season, because Drudge -- who "rules our world" -- did not cover them, at all:
- Mitt Romney was secretly videotaped insulting 47 percent of Americans for being dependent on handouts.
- Basically every poll that showed Obama beating Romney.
Drudge wrapped up 2012 by posting a banner headline that consisted solely of the slightly censored epithet "N*GGER" seven times in a row and leaving that headline up all day.
Matt Drudge: Truly still the Walter Cronkite of our time.
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