by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
October 29, 2004
as reported by Canada Free Press, a Florida attorney informed the Secret Service about a piece that appeared in the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper and picked up by the Drudge Report. The lawyer had asked the Secret Service to tell Matt Drudge to take down his “screaming red headline” that led Drudge readers to the English newspaper’s article.
The column in question was by the Guardian’s television writer, Charlie Brooker. Brooker used the U.S. televised presidential debates as an excuse to write an anti-Bush screed that is often found in the pages of the Guardian. What separated his column from the others was that Brooker called for the assassination of the U.S. president. He concluded his article with the following line, “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?”
as also reported by Canada Free Press editor Judi McLeod, the Guardian subsequently removed the offending article from its website and made the excuse that Brooker was just trying to be funny. Brooker’s defense is reminiscent of excuses made by those who are led away in handcuffs after making box cutter and bomb jokes while going through airport security. Some things are simply not funny and wishing that a Booth or an Oswald magically appear to solve next week’s U.S. election is one of them.
Criticism like that of Florida lawyer John B. Thompson was also levelled at Matt Drudge. His “screaming red headline” was comprised of the offending comments, preceded by the words “UK Guardian:” Clicking onto the headline linked the reader with the original Guardian article. Was Drudge wrong to put the offending article on his site?
There is always the possibility that some nut bar reading the article would go after Bush and the chance of that happening became greater after Drudge posted it. However there are compelling reasons why it should have been put on the Drudge Report.
By prefacing the offending quotation with the source, Drudge made it clear that he was not advocating Bush’s assassination. He was merely reporting that a British columnist bemoans the fact that no one has stepped forward, a la John Wilkes Booth, to kill the president. The fact that this calling for an assassin by a columnist in a major newspaper of a country closely allied to the United States so close to the election made it extremely newsworthy.
If someone takes the position that it should not have been posted on the Drudge Report because it might encourage someone to act, what else should not be reported? Perhaps the media should not run child pornography stories because a viewer or reader might get the idea to access child porn sites on the Internet from the news. Details of unusual frauds should perhaps not be reported because someone may decide to copy them. The list could go on and on.
Matt Drudge was right to post in on the Drudge Report and to draw attention to it. anything less would have amounted to censorship.