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| Birth Name(s) : Matt Drudge |
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Full Matt Drudge Biography
Matthew Nathan Drudge (born October 27, 1966) is an American Internet journalist and a talk radio host. He is best known as the proprietor of the Drudge Report website, which attracted national attention when it was the first to break the news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998.
Matthew Drudge, raised in Takoma Park, Maryland, near Washington, DC, is an only child. His parents are Jewish liberal-Democrats who both worked for the federal government. His father Robert Drudge, a former social worker who owns the reference site www.refdesk.com and his mother, a former staff attorney for Ted Kennedy , divorced when he was six. Drudge went to live with his mother. He had few friends but was an avid news reader and radio talk show fan. In his book Drudge Manifesto, Drudge reports that he "failed his Bar Mitzvah", and graduated 341st out of a class of 355 from Northwood High School in 1984, thus giving himself, in his words, a "more than adequate curriculum vitae for a post at 7-Eleven".
From 1998 to 1999, Drudge hosted a short-lived Saturday night television show called Drudge on the Fox News Channel starting in June 1998. The show ended abruptly in November 1999 when the two parties agreed to part ways. Drudge had refused to go on air, charging Fox News with censorship when the network prevented him from showing photos of surgery on the fetus of Samuel Armas. Drudge, who is pro-life, wanted to use a picture of a tiny hand reaching out from the womb to dramatize his argument against late-term abortion, but Fox's John Moody decided that that would be misleading because the tabloid photo dealt not with abortion but with an emergency operation on the fetus for spina bifida. Fox News charged him with breach of contract, but, after Drudge issued an apology, Fox issued a statement calling the parting "amicable". His contract was originally set to run through February 2001.
Drudge left his position as radio host with Premiere effective September 30, 2007. He was replaced by WLW's Bill Cunningham.
Drudge wrote a book in 2000 titled Drudge Manifesto. The book features a transcript of a Q&A session conducted at the National Press Club on June 2, 1998, which lays out Drudge's raison d'être. It also contains copies of e-mails sent to Drudge by his readers, dialogues between Drudge and his cat, and extensive descriptions of parties Drudge has attended and how the celebrities there reacted to him. A review by G. Beato of the Washington Post summarised the book as follows:
In their 2006 book The Way To Win, Mark Halperin and John Harris report that Ken Mehlman, the Republican Party chairman, kind of brags (as CNN host Howard Kurtz puts it) about utilizing the Drudge channel. They also write that:
In 2006, TIME Magazine named Drudge one of the 100 most influential people in the world, describing the Drudge Report as:
"A ludicrous combination of gossip, political intrigue and extreme weather reports ... still put together mostly by the guy who started out as a convenience-store clerk."
ABC News concluded that the Drudge Report sets the tone for national political coverage. The article states that:
In October 2006, Washington Post editor Len Downie, speaking at the Online News Association's annual convention in Washington, D.C., stated "Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."
In 2003, Drudge faced criticism for describing ABC reporter Jeffrey Kofman as "openly gay" in the headline "ABC News Reporter Who Filed Troops Complaint Story — Openly Gay Canadian" after Kofman interviewed anti-war soldiers in Iraq. Drudge's critics, like gay American writer and national talk radio host Michelangelo Signorile, point to the allegations of homosexuality levelled at Drudge himself by David Brock of Media Matters in his memoir Blinded by the Right, and by columnist Jeannette Walls in her book Dish. However, Drudge denied Walls's claim that he is gay, telling the Miami New Times in 2001 that "I go to straight bars, I go to gay bars. never said there was sex; she said there was dating. She never had enough to go that far." Drudge also discussed suing actor Alec Baldwin with his lawyer, after Baldwin claimed, during a Howard Stern interview, that Drudge had propositioned him. In 2005, Drudge told The Sunday Times "No, I’m not gay. I was nearly married a few years ago."
Drudge frequently champions himself as an independent populist, free from the influences of corporations, advertisers and editors.
When his site reached the one billion page view mark during 2002, Drudge summarized his activities in these broad terms: "In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news -- at least one day ahead... Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules."
Drudge has attempted to distinguish his political beliefs from those of the Republican party, arguing that his politics more accurately reflect libertarianism. In a 2005 interview with The Sunday Times Drudge described his politics:“I’m not a right-wing Republican,” he replies without batting an eye. “I’m a conservative and want to pay less taxes. And I did vote Republican at the last election. But I’m more of a populist.” |
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