A few days before the Wisconsin primary, Internet gossip Matt Drudge ran a vague and unsourced item on his Web site, the Drudge Report, that claimed ABC, Time magazine, the Associated Press and some other major news organizations were investigating a “recent alleged infidelity” by Sen. John Kerry with a “woman who recently fled the country.”
Drudge, who has only a tad more credibility than most Internet rumor-mongers because he broke the Monica Lewinsky story, also quoted an alleged off-the-record comment by Gen. Wesley Clark that “Kerry will implode over an intern issue.” Drudge provided links to a story in The Sun, a British tabloid that is known, to put it mildly, for its colorful news coverage. Headlined “New JFK Rocked by Sex Scandal,” the story named Alexandra Polier, 27, and quoted her father as calling Kerry a “sleazeball.”
Exciting stuff, except that none of it apparently was true. Ms. Polier, located in Kenya, and her parents denied the rumors. Her father said he had been misquoted and that he plans to vote for Kerry. Clark said he, too, had been misquoted and he endorsed Kerry. The news organizations that Drudge named denied that they had found anything about the rumors that was worth reporting.
And Kerry himself dismissed the story on Don Imus’ nationally syndicated radio program, saying there was “nothing to it.”
In the classic paradox of a Do-you-beat-your-wife question, his denial of the non-story became, in itself, a story. His denial prompted more media outlets to discuss the matter, even if only to discuss how the media were covering it or not covering it.
All in all, though, the coverage was mercifully restrained. It just may demonstrate that the news media has learned something about separating rumor from fact in the Internet age. When this story did hit print and broadcast, it was given much fuller, fact-based treatment.
That lesson came much to the chagrin of some armchair critics. Some conservative pundits and talk show hosts, in particular, urged their audiences to pester mainstream news organizations to pursue the Kerry rumors as persistently as they pursued the charge that President Bush was “AWOL” from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
The difference is that reporting on the president’s military service has largely been a matter of reporting public records: what is or isn’t there in his military files. Voters have been informed what the records show and they can make their own decisions about whether the information casts the president in a good or bad light, or any light.
The Kerry incident was a whisper campaign. Such campaigns are nothing new in American politics, but the Internet has given them new speed and power. The omnipresence of a rumor, though, is not reason enough to go into print with it. Drudge says “major media ought to be ashamed of themselves” for not pursuing the “red-hot story” he uncovered.
Ashamed? No, not this time.
