Today the Times' Brian Stelter profiles Mark Halperin and his web invention The Page, a "concise collection of up-to-the-minute political news" that has come to drive "the political agenda." The positive article credits Halperin's business acumen, since he built a bloggy tip-sheet from scratch that cuts through the political clutter online, drawing a million monthly visitors to his multi-colored outpost. "The Page" is Time's answer to the Drudge Report -- fast, salacious, superficial and offensive. Whatever it takes to drive traffic. Oh, and that's Halperin's analogy, not mine. "Matt Drudge rules our world," Halperin wrote in his book about political journalism, dubbing the chronically inaccurate entrepreneur "the Walter Cronkite of his era." The article makes a similar point:
The Page may be the mainstream media's closest thing to Drudge, with 24-hour updates and the no-frills design. Unlike Drudge, though, it comes with the imprimatur and credibility of an 85-year-old newsmagazine.
Fine, Drudge and Halperin draw visitors; they influence our politics; and The Times is covering that dynamic. But the article provides no alternative viewpoints on this high-traffic/low-integrity juggernaut -- or any information about Halperin's questionable record. (It only quotes Halperin, his boss Richard Stengel, and a current campaign operative, who really should be conflicted out of disinterested analysis, since he depends on Halperin for coverage.)
Yet readers would have no idea about how Halperin leverages The Page -- and Time's credibility -- to stoke gossip, innuendo and even advise politicians on dirty tricks. Here are three recent examples:
Halperin advised McCain to "play dirty" and use "race" against Obama, telling the Republican candidate to "[a]llow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama."
Halperin falsely accused the Clinton Campaign of pushing opposition research onto a columnist, without checking the accuracy of the claim.
Halperin advised McCain to traffic in smears that the Senator had already disavowed, including this imperative: "Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama's unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism."
That is part of what Halperin writes for Time at The Page. So Time pays reporters to advise candidates on how to "play dirty," exploit race and spread falsehoods based on bigotry and treason. And The Times can report on how popular Halperin's recipe is -- though it really ought to give readers the entire list of ingredients. The rest of the media-political culture laps it up. The article correctly notes that The Page drives not only Halperin's traffic, but his influence among fellow media elites -- from his positive, incomplete profiles in The Times and The New Yorker to his longstanding leadership of the "Gang of 500." (See Eric Boehlert's great article). And that tells you everything you need to know about our broken political media.
The only encouraging sign, evident in long-term opinion data and the recent ABC Debate fallout, is that the public strongly rejects this superficial, smear-driven journalism. The fact that some of the country's top journalists continue to practice it, in defiance of professional ethics and the public will, is a striking display of actual elitism on the campaign trail this year.