News

Matt Drudge, the reclusive publisher of the digital media giant Drudge Report, was raging Monday after a Washington Post story attacked him for linking to “Russian propaganda” during the 2016 campaign and beyond. Drudge fired back on Twitter, reminding the Post that he had linked to the Jeff Bezos-owned paper thousands of times and said he was responsible for more than a third of its referral traffic on the paper’s website. “I’ve linked to @washingtonpost over 10,000X in 25 years of doing Drudgereport. I currently give them 37% of their referral traffic, according to similarweb.com,” he wrote. “It’s a brutal business.

Matt Drudge used his powerful platform on Friday to bash an old ally, Breitbart News chief and former White House adviser Steve Bannon. On his website, Drudge linked to a piece from The Hill, with the message, “Bannon Revolution ‘Helps Dems.'” The conservative media stalwart then followed up with an even blunter tweet: Bannon Helps Dems! https://t.co/d2ERwHAGAH – Drudge Report (@DRUDGE_REPORT) October 13, 2017 Also Read: All 18 Movies and Shows Steve Bannon Wrote, Directed or Produced (Photos) The piece by Hill opinion contributor Mark Plotkin, claims that Bannon’s promised wars against incumbent Gop senators will only...

Laura Ingraham is in line for a Fox News Channel primetime slot Matt Drudge has suggested via Twitter. The morning radio host/Donald Trump supporter has served as a fill-in host and contributor at the cable news network, so the move makes sense as the network mulls life sans Eric Bolling, who is suspended pending an investigation into claims he sent unsolicited photo of male genitalia to several woman at the network. Bolling has denied the accusations. Drudge posted a…...

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter took to Twitter on Thursday night to mock her friend Matt Drudge for “promoting fake news” by reporting that University of California at Berkeley reversed its decision to cancel an upcoming speech. Now @Drudge promoting Fake News:'Berkeley reverses decision to cancel speech by Coulter'… Idea: Read past the headline on a press release! — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 21, 2017 Drudge reported that Berkeley, which has been rocked by two violent protests recently, announced Thursday that it had reversed its earlier decision to cancel conservative speaker Ann Coulter’s April 27 appearance and will now allow her to speak at the.

Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge called out Republicans on Tuesday who he said had “lied about wanting tax cuts.” “Btw, Republicans lied about wanting tax cuts,” Drudge tweeted. “Can we get our votes back?” Btw, Republicans lied about wanting tax cuts. Can we get our votes back? — Matt Drudge (@Drudge) March 14, 2017 Also Read: Matt Drudge Suggests Us Government Carried Out Cyber Attack on Drudge Report Drudge also slammed the National Weather Service’s handling of Winter Storm Stella, which proved to be less severe than expected. “Trump should clear out climate hysterics from Nws,” Drudge tweeted on Tuesday. “All storms grossly exaggerated.

As the entertainment community comes off a year where seemingly countless legends passed away, 2017 isn't getting off to a great start on this front either. The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty has passed away at the age of 89. The news broke on Twitter this morning by The Exorcist director William Friedkin, although no cause of death has been given at this time. The director only shared that Blatty died yesterday, calling the writer a "dear friend and brother."

After news of his death broke, a number of entertainment and horror luminaries took to Twitter to pay tribute to the late author. Earlier this morning, tributes started pouring in from Stephen King, directors Edgar Wright and Joe Lynch, and Jeremy Slater, who created the The Exorcist TV series that debuted last fall on Fox. The late author celebrated his 89th birthday less than a week ago.

William Peter Blatty was born January 7, 1928 in New York City,...

Matt Drudge is wondering whether the U.S. government was involved in a distributed denial-of-service attack that shut down his conservative Drudge Report website for about 90 minutes Thursday night. The attack occurred just hours after President Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia for hacking the U.S. presidential campaign. Drudge noted the site was experiencing the worst denial of service attack since its inception and called the timing…...

The Drudge Report was shot down for roughly 90 minutes on Tuesday night and founder Matt Drudge took to Twitter to suggest that the government had something to do with it. Is the Us government attacking Drudge Report? Biggest DDoS since site's inception. Very suspicious routing . — Matt Drudge (@Drudge) December 30, 2016 DDoS, which Drudge mentions, stands for disrupted denial of service, refers to an attack where multiple compromised systems are used to target a digital property, such as a website. Drudge Report is an extremely popular conservative news site that was an outspoken Donald Trump supporter during the recent...

Russia had a hand in spreading fake news to millions of Americans during the election cycle, according to two independent research groups, PropOrNot and Foreign Policy Research Institute. The Washington Post was the first media outlet to report PropOrNot’s findings that there are over 200 websites described as “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans.” The most recognizable names on the list of “sites that reliably echo Russian propaganda” include Alex Jones’ Infowars, Julian Assange’s Wikileaks and Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report. Others include The Federalist Papers, ZeroHedge, the Free Thought Project and.

A cute little girl’s rant against Hillary Clinton on YouTube and had less than 200 views when conservative internet news curator Matt Drudge posted the video Friday of the lass saying Clinton “is a bad person.” Shortly thereafter, thousands had made her the must-see video of the day. Drudge is a traffic monster and posting a link to the video could make the girl an instant celebrity. “Nobody likes Hillary. She is a bad person,” the girl says while looking into the camera. “Donald Trump is the greatest person in the whole entire world.” Also Read: Sean Hannity to Work for President.

Roger Ailes will step down as chairman and CEO of Fox News, according to a since-deleted tweet on Tuesday from influential conservative media commentator Matt Drudge that included an exit document.  Drudge, who posted what appears to be the separation agreement between Ailes and Fox News, took it down minutes after posting the document. The final day for the exec, who has been embroiled in a sexual harassment investigation by Fox News parent 21st Century Fox, is dated July 22. Asked to confirm Ailes' exit, a Fox News spokesperson declined to comment, but a rep for 21st Century Fox

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Conservative news aggregator Matt Drudge upset some prominent members of his fan base last week when his website featured a “Black Lives Kill” headline following the attack on police officers in Dallas. The attack left five police officers killed and Business Insider‘s Oliver Darcy called Drudge’s word a “race-baiting headline,” while calling Drudge a “once reliable ally who has become more and more divisive” to conservatives. “I just deleted my Drudge app,” National Review writer David French declared on Twitter after seeing the controversial headline. Also Read: Radio Host Joe Walsh Says He Got 17,000 Death Threats After 'Cop Hater' Obama Tweets “Since its.

A lot of gnarly shit goes down in the new Leonardo DiCaprio–led film The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and opening on Christmas Day. It’s a frontier-set revenge story, after all, where DiCaprio’s injured fur trapper is left for dead by his comrades, then must crawl through grime and muck and lurch through the forest in order to exact his revenge. The movie is bloody and violent, and there’s no doubt about that. However, one thing I can assure you the film lacks is bear rape.This is not an article I expected to write today, but then I saw a siren-gif’d headline at the Drudge Report that announced in all caps: “DiCaprio Raped By Bear In Fox Movie!” (One assumes that if he had been raped by a bear in a Paramount movie, it would have been handled with more decorum?) According to Matt Drudge’s misinformed source,...

Matt Drudge, founder of conservative mega-site The Drudge Report, wasn’t a fan of Fox Business Network’s Gop debate on Tuesday, slamming the candidates for not attacking Hillary Clinton as hard as an upcoming movie about the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack does. In a since-deleted tweet, Drudge went off on the Republican presidential candidates for failing to punch at Clinton. He was referencing a trailer for the film “13 Hours” — set for release early next year. The promo played during the Fox Business debate, depicting the hectic terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya, which Republicans have widely blamed.

The king of conservative media Matt Drudge gave a rare interview Tuesday that blasted Hillary Clinton, President Obama, social, digital and corporate media. Speaking with radio host Alex Jones off-camera, Drudge responded to critics who’ve called him a “right-wing gossip monger” for years, largely because of his coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “Why aren’t we seeing Hillary’s lovers; where’s the cover up on this?” he asked before adding that there’s so many issues being suppressed by the media on a daily basis. Also Read: Drudge's Headline About 11-Year-Old's Death: 'Illegal Found Dead in...

In the tense hours overnight from Thursday, April 18, to Friday, April 19, after Boston Marathon bombing suspects and brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsnarnev engaged in a shootout with police -- and after the murder of MIT police Officer Sean Collier -- Jake Tapper essentially was CNN.

"I was anchoring," he tells Zap2it, talking on Thursday (May 16), "from something like 1:30 in the morning till 9:30 in the morning. That was a crazy night."

With photos of the suspects circulating, Tapper stayed on his iPad, following news and social-media reports and listening to the local police scanners, via a link provided to by followers to his popular Twitter feed, @jaketapper.

"I reached out to the CNN news desk," he recalls, "and said, 'Is anyone listening to this?' This is one in the morning. 'Is anyone listening to this? Something serious is going on.'"

Throughout the entire incident, which resulted...

The Drudge Report’s namesake Matt Drudge sparingly uses his personal Twitter account to voice his thoughts on news-of-the-day; and when he does it is often opinionated. While reflecting upon the Monday afternoon Boston marathon bombings this evening, Drudge tweeted out a stab at CNN host Piers Morgan, who became the most vocal advocate for gun control on television after December's massacre in Newtown, Conn.

MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor and host Touré joined Martin Bashir on Wednesday where they lambasted the Drudge Report and its proprietor, Matt Drudge, for running a headline which featured N-word nine times under a picture of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. The headline criticized Tarantino’s new film in which Jamie Foxx plays a freed slave who returns to kill his slave masters. Taylor, however, thought Drudge's headline catered to a base group still coping with frustration over President Barack Obama’s race...

The Drudge Report put a startling splash up on Wednesday morning.

There must not have been anything in the worlds of politics, finance or global affairs to interest Matt Drudge enough, because he made Quentin Tarantino the focus of his ire. Tarantino's new movie, "Django Unchained," is set to open in theaters soon. Set just before the Civil War, it contains characters using the N-word.

Apparently that got Drudge all hot and bothered -- though in a very strange way:

The splash linked to, of all things, a review in The Hollywood Reporter which mentions the n-word twice, never spelling it out as much as Drudge.

Was Drudge saying that he was appalled that Tarantino would use the word? Or trying to make some vague point about hypocrisy? Or merely being cheap and incendiary? We'd never speculate.

This will be remembered as the day Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, Tucker Carlson, and much of the right wing prepared to board their white resentment mothership, only to have it crash and burn. On Tuesday night's Hannity, host Hannity dropped the "bombshell" that Drudge had been teasing for hours, and that The Daily Caller published "exclusively": a 2007 speech that was actually covered extensively at the time, now being hyped as "The Other Race Speech." The ultimate punchline in this long comedy bit of a story, though, is that the speech Hannity says "so-called unbiased journalists have been trying to hide for years" was actually aired by Fox News.

Being Steve Jobs' successor is no easy task -- but Tim Cook is off to a good start, having been named the most influential gay man in America.

After taking the reins from the late Jobs last year, the 51-year-old Apple CEO returns to the top spot of Out magazine's annual "Power" list of the nation's most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (Lgbt) people.

"Last year, Cook was still the man-in-waiting, assuming control of Apple, but still in the shadow of Steve Jobs," Out's editors write. "More of a manager than an oracle, Cook is now fully in charge of the world’s most valuable company -- it surpassed ExxonMobil in 2012 -- which means it’s his show to run."

Cook's in good company, too: Ellen DeGeneres, Rachel Maddow and Andy Cohen also made the top ten.

In a move that will undoubtedly ruffle the feathers of some in the Lgbt community,...

Conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, the conservative entrepreneur and blogger who got his leg up in the media world with Matt Drudge of the Drudge report, died Wednesday allegedly of a heart attack in Los Angeles. Breitbart appeared on .The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur. on February 14. It was one of his last media appearances. Breitbart was booked requently on Fox News and appeared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. His aggressive reporting on websites and his speeches to conservative groups made him a polarizing figure. Republican presidential candidates quickly responded to news of Breitbart's death. Former Sen. Rick Santorum called him a "powerful force" who was "constantly out there driving and pushing." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tweeted:...

Matt Drudge, the founder of the conservative news aggregation giant The Drudge Report, paid tribute to his friend Andrew Breitbart, who died suddenly on Thursday. “Dear Reader,” Drudge wrote at the top of his site. “In the first decade of the Drudgereport Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment.” He added: “We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what's happening. I don't think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with...

Andrew Breitbart made a career out of savaging the liberal media, but journalists on both sides of the political aisle honored the conservative firebrand upon news of his death Thursday. First there was Matt Drudge, his former boss and founder of The conservative-leaning Drudge Report, who wrote at the top of his site: “In the first decade of the Drudgereport Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment. […] I still see him in my mind’s eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in...

Andrew Breitbart, author, blogger and former editor of the Drudge Report, died in Los Angeles early Thursday morning. He was just 43.

According to his website Breitbart.com, he passed away from natural causes. The following statement was posted today:

"With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart. We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior."

The...

No, we’re not talking about Courtney Stodden, we’re talking about this year’s newcomers to the Twitterverse. Having passed its half-decade mark, the site continues to attract A-listers who have a little time and 140 characters to spare for an occasional rant or rave. So, which celebs got a taste of the dreaded #failwhale for the first time in 2011? Read on…

Jan. 28: James Cameron

He hasn’t tweeted since April 19. It was good while it lasted, then we struggled to remember exactly what was so exciting at the time. Kind of like Avatar.

Best tweet: “Arnold @Schwarzenegger and...

As the steamy photographic drama continues to develop for Congressman Anthony Weiner, records show that he took part in his racy online sessions whenever his wife Huma Abedin was overseas with Secretary Hillary Clinton, according to the NY Post.

Huma, a longtime aide and also known as Clinton's "body woman," accompanied Hillary -- even when she was First Lady, on many of her international diplomatic trips. In May, while Abedin and Clinton flew to Rome...

Journalist Andrew Breitbart is the man responsible for breaking the news of Congressman Anthony Weiner's lewd photo sent to a Seattle college student. Breitbart originally posted the underwear pic on his political website, BigGovernment.com.

5 Facts About Andrew BreitbartPlush Life

Andrew grew up in the posh neighborhood of Brentwood in Los Angeles.

He Doesn't Begrudge the Drudge

In 1995, Breitbart saw the Drudge Report and was so impressed that he emailed Matt Drudge. After meeting Drudge and working for him,...

(Spoiler warning: The third paragraph of this story says who the Drudge Report has named the winner of 'American Idol.') And the winner is... Matt Drudge. Not of "American Idol," but of the quest to spoil one of television's best-kept secrets. Hours before Wednesday's finale aired, the Drudge Report posted that (seriously, last warning)... Also read: 'American Idol' -- And the Winner Is [Spoiler Alert] Scotty McCreery beat Lauren Alaina in the "Idol" season finale. As an added bonus: Drudge was right. The site announced, hours before it was official: Un-cool, Un-hip, Country-fried Singer Wins 'American...

Fox's Shepard Smith

Last week, Out Magazine released the Power 50, their (fifth) annual list of who they deem to be the most powerful gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgender individuals in the U.S.

Acting Apple CEO Tim Cook topped the list, followed by Ellen DeGeneres.

I've worked at AfterElton.com long enough to know that it's impossible to publish any such list, which are all by definition pretty subjective, without attracting a whole host of complaints over omissions and overly generous rankings (and plenty of people are also upset the list includes no people of color, among many other reasons).

The discussions and arguments are kinda the whole point of lists like these.

But yeah, I have my own complaint: Out is almost ridiculously vague about exactly what it is they're actually measuring. They say, "As always, the positions were determined by a range of factors, including power to influence cultural and social attitudes,...

Coincidence? Maybe. But there's no denying the stories Matt Drudge puts on his Drudge Report get plenty of attention. For bloggers and media types, a Drudge link feels like winning the lottery--suddenly the world's at your door, eagerly consuming your content. But what if the content in that Drudge link is bad news about your business? Well, that's a lot of eyeballs reading something you'd rather see buried. Instead, the Drudge link can grab hold of your stock price and sink it six feet under.

Over the weekend, Twitter welcomed a notable microblogger member to its ranks: perpetually panicked provocateur and Internet patriarch Matt Drudge. “Took time to find name i could use, all were taken,” he wrote on Saturday. (His handle is @Drudge.) “lots of matt drudges, drudge reports out there. Often imitated, never quite duplicated.” In his two days of tweeting, the conservative recluse has posted his thoughts on such subjects as President Obama’s popularity (it’s in decline) and the Super Bowl halftime show (“Have Gwee cast do halftime with gaga songs, stadium crowd would rampage, be like scene from Carrie but with beer”). In his author photo, Drudge wears sunglasses and a large cowboy hat—accessories that are nothing short of shocking. Drudge’s signature fedora—now seemingly discarded—was as enduring a component of his public image as his uniformly punctuated sentences and morbid preoccupation with the weather.

Matt Drudge, a fedora’ed figure from the Internet’s antiquity, has published what he claims is the first sentence of George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points. According to the Drudge Report, the book begins, “It was a simple question, ‘Can you remember the last day you didn't have a drink?’” Presumably, the libations-centric question sends Bush on a Proustian (shame) spiral throughout his early alcohol-abusing days. (The first chapter, also according to Drudge, is called “Quitting.”) In any event, as a first sentence, it’s fine; there’s nothing about it that makes us particularly dread reading the second sentence. Note that this opening also avoids the classic political memoir trope of including a significant date in the opening sentence.

Obviously the Drudge Report is a nightmare website. And we all know that, and we accept it for what it is. But sometimes… it is just so nightmare-ish and mean spirited that it surprises even me, a person who thinks Matt Drudge spends his spare time harassing billy goats gruff. So, there’s a lot going on today, right? It’s not even a traditional “slow news day.” Jimmy Carter is in the hospital; there was a shooting at the University of Texas. Things are happening. But the top story on the Drudge Report right now, as far as I can tell, is that one time somebody took an unflattering picture of Hillary Clinton. Let’s zoom in a little. “Noah, surely there is more to that story. The headline, ‘Demon Photo Moved On Wire’… that clearly means something and if you click on that link, I’m positive you...

Celebrity Journalism is like crack. Americans are addicted to it. We need to hear the Mel Gibson tapes and see Lindsay Lohan report to jail. So why do newspapers, magazines, and television keep feeding our habit? As Charles Taylor stated in a 1998 article on Salon.com, "Having a celebrity on the cover sells magazines. That keeps advertisers and the publisher happy, and that, in the here-today, gone-tomorrow world of magazines, keeps the editor employed." If the mainstream media doesn't cover celebrities, people will get the news anyway through outlets like Radar.com, TMZ, the Drudge Report, Perez Hilton, and National Enquirer. Of course, it was Matt Drudge's breaking of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that put him on the map. Celebrity journalism outlets are...

Dave Weigel, The Washington Post’s embed in conservative grassroots movements, has resigned this afternoon following an incident earlier this week involving Matt Drudge, the blog Fishbowl D.C., and a private e-mail listserv. Let’s back up. Yesterday, Fishbowl D.C.’s Betsy Rothstein published some missives from Weigel that he had originally sent to JournoList, a large private listserv of pundits, journalists, and political staffers founded by fellow Post colleague Ezra Klein. Eric Alterman’s a member, and so is Jeffrey Toobin! This Rothstein gal had obtained the e-mails through means unknown and decided to publish them, for perhaps she thought this would be some sort of hot scoop. Instead, she was widely castigated for posting the personal messages—it is understood among JournoList subscribers that all correspondence is off-the-record. “I’m leaking that Betsy Rothstein is America’s worst journalist. Hopefully she’ll pick it up for a Fishbowl story,...

Bill O'Reilly found it fairly strange that, after clamoring for the President to show anger, many in the media then found it distasteful for him to turn around and express his frustration while trying to find "whose ass to kick" over the Bp oil disaster. Of particular note was Drudge Report proprietor Matt Drudge's headline: "Obama Goes Street," which O'Reilly saw as "nifty" and "kind of with it" but was amazed that anyone would see a hint of racial commentary in it.<!--...

Harry Knowles who founded review site that can make or break a film among unlikely web 'celebrities'

A self-confessed "gargantuan geek" who calls himself "Hollywood's red-headed stepchild" and launched his movie news and reviews website from his sickbed, has made Forbes magazine's first attempt to rank the 25 most influential people on the internet.

Among the media pundits, sex bloggers, business analysts and gossip columnists who dominate the Web Celeb list, Harry Knowles, founder of Ain't It Cool News, in at 13th place, cuts a striking figure.

"In a list full of unlikely celebrities, this may be the most improbable," Forbes says, but adds: "The site quickly became and still remains one of the web's most popular destinations for entertainment news."

Knowles's biography on Wikipedia (whose co-founder, Jimmy Wales, makes the list one place higher) claims he was injured in 1994 after being run over by the cart he was pushing up a ramp at a convention,...

As newsrooms shrink and real reporters are given their walking papers, networks are having a harder time justifying enormous salary contracts for "personalities" to spearhead their news divisions. Matt Drudge of DrudgeReport.com reports that CBS' anchorwoman and 60 Minutes contributor Katie Couric (who pulls in $14+ million annually) may be downsized in salary. Drudge writes that the CBS chieftain Les Moonves is putting the network on a cost-cutting diet, and no one is immune to the trimming. "She makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year!" says a producer to Matt Drudge. "It's complete insanity...We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a...

By Amy Kaufman

It's no secret that new media often relies upon old media to supplement its web pages with fresh content -- but just how heavily?

 

New media is "extremely dependent" upon its predecessors, according to the University of Illinois' coordinator of information technology and research Kalev Leetaru, who analyzed an astonishing 171,717 page updates from January 2002 to December 2008 on the Drudge Report.

 

Since its inception, the news aggregation website founded in the late 1990s by Matt Drudge has had a large impact on the media sphere -- Drudge hims...

The New Republic, continuing the political world’s odd obsession with the Drudge Report, says its editor, Matt Drudge, has disappeared, or gone into seclusion like some latter-day Howard Hughes. I do not think Drudge has disappeared. I think he is dead. Certainly the Drudge Report, which the New Republic claims gets “20 million hits per day” (a meaningless locution as old-fashioned as the Drudge Report itself) has been on automatic pilot for several years. If he is not dead, he is definitely brain dead. There hasn’t been a breaking story on the site in months. Drudge, once one of the most vaunted gossips in the nation, clearly isn’t in the loop. Or he is just bored to death. He had been doing this for a decade. It is the same old Drudge Report, without improvement or variation. Or staff. Drudge may have theoretically gotten rich (“sources believe he...

Texas has always been a country within a country, but now the Governor is sabre-rattling and tossing the word "secede" around in broad, microphone-adjacent daylight. The last few days, Matt Drudge of Drudge Report fame has been having a field day with his patented alarm graphic with a variety of titillating headlines that reveal Texas is ready to bolt from the Union. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a Tea Party participant who told his Lone Star State audience that the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt. Perry was interviewed by news reporters and allegedly suggested Texans might like to secede from the union. "There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great...