Matt Drudge 's report on an alleged infidelity scandal in the John F. Kerry campaign broke about an hour ago. Fact or fiction, I've been having fun watching the impending trainwreck. Wonkette and Instapundit [11:46 AM] were the first mainstream bloggers (Did I just say that???) to post something about it.
The wonderful thing about the Internet and weblogs are the timestamps. Here's the moment the story broke on Howard Dean's Blog for America:
second and check out DRUDGE! HERE IT COMES!!! Posted by barry in va at February 12, 2004 11:37 AM
Google's news search had just two articles ("Will Press Pounce on Drudge's Kerry Rumor?" and "Media investigating alleged recent infidelity Democrat rivals...") as of 12:30 PM. Though one outlet is for journalists and the other is something I'd put in the right-wing category to say the least.
I guess at the moment I am much more interested in how this unfolds from a media coverage perspective, than whether or not there is any truth in the story. Either way, this is going to be a trainwreck for either Kerry or the sharks that get caught chasing nothing more than blood in the water.
At the moment, much of bloggerdom appears to be silent. Either they're getting real work done or waiting to see which direction things turn. As of 1 PM there's no word from Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, or David Weinberger on the story. More importantly, I don't see anything from Mickey Kaus, Joshua Marshall, or Eric Alterman. Nothing from Jim Romenesko either but Andrew Sullivan has a very brief mention of the Drudge story in the Daily Dish.
Perhaps the real story and commentary is unfolding on the campaign blogs themselves. The Dean Blog has been on fire with comments and the John Kerry Blog has comments full of back-and-forth between Kerry and Dean supporters. The John Edwards Blog has comments that read like kids on Christmas morning.
At 2 PM there's nothing from CNN, although it appears as though Ken and Barbie are breaking up, Fox News isn't going near the story at the moment, and MSNBC is covering human cloning and the "battle" over gay marriage.
Of course, all of this is very early in terms of coverage and reaction. But it reminds me of past alleged scandals where the big voices let someone else like Drudge break the story and then pounced. Not only are most of the big media not covering this one but the tech bloggers turned political bloggers (and the just plain political bloggers) are no where to be found. Granted, there are a few exceptions.
Leave it to one of my daily reads, The Scotsman, to run the first mainstream story: "Mystery of Kerry and the Intern". It's essentially a rehash of the original Drudge story, but it leads with "Allegations against Vietnam war hero John Kerry today threatened his runaway presidential campaign." Something tells me the over-the-pond tabloids are redoing tomorrow's front pages as we speak, but what about The New York Times or The Washington Post?.
February 12, 2004 in Politics | Permalink
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