Drudge Outs Harry

Prince Harry was pulled out of Afghanistan and sent home yesterday, after the Drudge Report outed the fact that he was there in the first place.

There. I said it. The Drudge Report.

I've been having a good chuckle at the hypocrisy of the mainstream media. They call the war on terror a sham, and demand that the troops come home. In Britain, Tony Blair is dubbed as "Bush's poodle" for putting British troops into action. Then Prince Harry goes to war and suddenly he is a hero, with photos of a gun-wielding Prince gracing the front pages of all the major papers.

So which is it? Prince Harry the hero, but Blair the warmonger? How does that work?

The press's hypocrisy continues. It's no secret that they hate Drudge (he broke the Lewinsky scandal, and they haven't forgiven him since), but what is the Drudge Report really? It's a link site. Drudge makes the headlines, but 99.9% of those headlines lead to other sources. Due to a media blackout on the "Prince Harry Goes to War" story, the papers were mum. Then Drudge links to an Australian news piece that says Harry is in Afghanistan, and all bets are off. The mainstream press didn't wait five seconds to plaster the news all over their front pages.

I scoured the papers and the news services and found one that named Drudge as the source. For the rest, it was "a foreign website," or "an American website."

Well, that's not exactly how you learn to quote sources in Journalism 101, is it? Drudge is not some secret source that they met in an underground parking lot. With one click of the mouse, anyone on the planet can see what he's up to. For them not to quote Drudge by name is like saying, "According to a Washington official," after talking to the President.

But that's the media. The war is a sham, but Harry's a hero, and Drudge is a jerk for running the story, but now we'll make a whole weekend edition out of it without saying his name.

The plummeting ratings and newspaper sales of the mainstream press are not shocking. The arrogant fools are being outscooped all the time by people that own a laptop and a cell phone. For them not to quote Drudge as the source of their lastest windfall is not only arrogant, it's petty. It also shows how frightened these crusanders of hard journalism really are.

Photo taken from the Drudge Report