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I would like to stop the annoying reload Drudgereport.com does. How?

• 1 has this problem
• Last reply by Eastcreek

3 years ago

Everyone going to the above mentioned website experiences the same annoying reloads. Please add a method to Firefox like IE has that can restrict sites reloading, assuming this doesn't exist already. Thanks

Chosen solution

I tried this script with Greasemonkey and I haven't seen a refresh. I don't know if it also works with Tampermonkey and Violentmonkey.

All Replies (11)

I had no problem with Drudgereport.com

Many site issues can be caused by corrupt cookies or cache.

Warning ! ! This will log you out of sites you're logged in to. You may also lose any settings for that website.

• Delete cookies to remove the information websites have stored on your computer {web link}
• How to clear the Firefox cache {web link}

If there is still a problem, Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} by holding down the <Shift> (Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox.

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Did this help?

While you are in safe mode;

Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration in Firefox. Since this feature was added to Firefox it has gradually improved but there are still a few glitches.

How to disable Hardware Acceleration {web link}

Thanks Fred,

I have tried both suggestions above but the same (.....for years now!) "problem" or annoying website trait still exists. I don't think it is a matter with my use of Firefox. Like I said above, I am fairly certain everyone reading the news headlines there get an automatic reload after about 4 minutes. Any other suggestions or could the developers there add a "restricted site" way to handle the annoyance like I have seen IE has?

• Top 10 Contributor

You can use a bookmarklet to disable the reload on drudgereport.com or possibly convert the script to an extension like Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey.

• /questions/1058404 Option to 'Warn me when websites...try to reload' doesn't work?
• https://greasyfork.org/en/forum/discussion/6024/script-request-stop-auto-reload-of-page

Check out: https://www.google.nl/search?authuser=1&sxsrf=ACYBGNTmT2SCOspwkd7PaX6D_oJit9TUAA%3A1581833219196&source=hp&ei=A9xIXtfLCYyZsAe8_YFA&q=in+firefox%3A+drudgereport.com+keeps+reloading&oq=in+firefox%3A+drudgereport.com+keeps+reloading&gs_l=psy-ab.3...4467.22368..23271...2.0..0.154.3099.44j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......35i39j0j0i67j0i20i263j0i22i30j0i22i10i30j33i160j33i10.b1zZRuOeM-I&ved=0ahUKEwiX2fz4s9XnAhWMDOwKHbx-AAgQ4dUDCAU&uact=5

Running this greasemonkey script at drudgereport.com now but the page still reloads. What is wrong?

// ==UserScript==

Every time I type "about config" in the search bar Startpage does an internet search. I don't get the warning message. What am I doing wrong?

The accessibility pref accessibility.blockautorefresh won't work for Drudge report as this only works for a location change via a meta tag and is meant for users with certain disabilities. This pref only works in this case and not in other cases like a reload via JavaScript that Drudge uses. This is one of the reason that this setting was removed from Options/Preferences.

Drudge report still uses the same code for auto refresh as you can see if you inspect the page source.

Did you try the bookmarklet ?

• javascript:clearInterval(timer);void(autoRefresh=null);

You can create a new bookmark and paste the JavaScript code in its Location field where you normally place the URL.

You need to invoke the bookmarklet each time you load or refresh a Drudge report page unlike the Greasemonkey script that would run automatically.

Modified February 17, 2020 at 3:05:56 AM PST by cor-el

You may only have to change http:// to https:// is this line or add this line to support both protocols.

Changed about:config to true and added the second line to my copied script (..and saved it) and it still reloads. Frustrating. I'm starting to wonder if Matt Drudge has done something extra and hidden to make sure no reload blocks can occur to ensure profits stay in place? :)

I don't understand this: "Did you try the bookmarklet ?

You need to invoke the bookmarklet each time you load or refresh a Drudge report page unlike the Greasemonkey script that would run automatically."

Modified February 17, 2020 at 2:52:04 AM PST by Eastcreek

Chosen Solution

That one worked! Thank You!

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Can Matt Drudge Survive Without the MAGA Faithful?

By Caleb Ecarma

Matt Drudge, the mysterious media maven, conservative kingmaker, and arguably the most influential news aggregator in history, has officially found himself on Donald Trump ’s “no longer hot” list. It’s a club that includes just one other member: Vanity Fair, whose Oscar party the president declared “no longer ‘hot’” before he took office. For someone who repeats insults reflexively—“like a dog” and “choked” and “low energy” being prime examples—this shows remarkable restraint. It’s a safe bet, then, that this specific insult is reserved for those toward which Trump feels complete and utter disdain.

Matt Drudge has earned his place on the president’s hit list. He was a key player in helping the president win the 2016 Republican primary, and thus the presidency, and visited the White House early on—Trump once called him a “great gentleman” and treated his headlines like gospel. Why the fall from grace? The answer is fairly straightforward: In Trump’s simple mind, those who exclusively praise him are good, and those who don’t are bad, no matter their shared history. Drudge was one of the earliest major media figures to champion then candidate Trump in 2015 and acted as a de facto publicist on behalf of the campaign, according to former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg, a claim he made in Matthew Lysiak ’s biography The Drudge Revolution. However, last summer, cracks began to show in their symbiotic relationship as the Drudge Report’s top headline blared, “No New Wall At All!” The aggregation site, which regularly drives hundreds of millions of page views every month, hasn’t let up on the president since, following its initial shot with a jab over the expansion of big government policies “On Trump Watch”; a line on how Trump’s “trash talk” has hurt his favorability among suburban women; and a warning from farmers that the president's trade wars are “ruining our markets.”

By late 2019, Drudge’s relatively nuanced, policy-based scrutiny of Trump had bloomed into him seemingly hopping on the pro-impeachment bandwagon. As the White House’s Ukraine scandal dragged on last fall, the Drudge Report’s headlines began to read like HuffPost, rather than a publication routinely read on air by conservative talk-radio hosts; selections included “Republican criticism [of Trump] mounts,” “Senate likelier to remove,” “Trump on Brink,” and one that simply juxtaposed the word “Swamped” with a strategically chosen photo of the president looking deflated.

The president returned fire in April when Drudge ran a headline that read “NO PEAK YET,” warning of the impending body count caused by coronavirus. “I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others,” Trump tweeted . He also retweeted a post accusing Drudge of sensationalizing and spreading lies about the pandemic. And he concluded the series by claiming that the Drudge Report’s readership is dwindling by the day: “People are dropping off like flies!” For the fedora-wearing recluse, who is rarely seen outside his South Florida compound, much less driven to make a public comment of any kind, it was apparently a bridge too far. “The past 30 days has been the most eyeballs in Drudge Report's 26 year-history,” Drudge wrote in an emailed statement to CNN. “Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances.”

The conflict escalated again this month, when a particularly aggressive Drudge headline noted Trump’s denial that a “Mini-Stroke Sent Him to Hospital,” complete with a beautifully clickable kicker: “VIDEO: [Trump] Dragging Right Leg.” This was apparently the final straw for Trump, who decided it was time for no more Mr. “really nice guy.” He responded by insisting that Drudge did not support him in 2016 and “doesn’t support me now. Maybe that’s why he is doing poorly. His Fake News report on Mini-Strokes is incorrect.” Trump then posited that Drudge is “Possibly thinking about himself, or the other party’s ‘candidate,’” referencing his claims about Joe Biden ’s diminishing mental state. Curiously, Drudge has not pushed the theory that Biden is losing it, despite most conservative outlets obsessing over the Democratic nominee’s supposed cognitive decline. His decision to opt out is particularly notable given that, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, his site aided in spreading conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton ’s supposedly failing health.

By Eve Batey

By Richard Lawson

By Erin Vanderhoof

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

The president has continued to batter his old friend this week, tweeting on Sunday that Drudge’s site “is down 40% plus since he became Fake News. Most importantly, he’s bleeding profusely, and is no longer ‘hot.’ But others are!” In a Monday tweet, he claimed, “Our people have all left Drudge,” and tagged the site’s namesake to call him “a confused MESS, has no clue what happened. Down 51%.” He finished his tantrum by promoting a new Drudge Report competitor, writing that his supporters are now reading sites “like REVOLVER.” Launched over the summer, just months after the president first began attacking Drudge, Revolver News is a conservative aggregation website that caters to ardent Trump supporters and coronavirus skeptics with headlines like: “COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself.” Its notable readers thus far include Rep. Paul Gosar , an Arizona Republican who pushed an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and Michelle Malkin, a right-wing commentator who recently hailed a white nationalist figure as one of the “New Right leaders.” Darren J. Beattie, an ex–White House speechwriter who left his Trump appointment in 2018 after it was revealed that he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists, works for Revolver News—and appeared Tuesday night on Tucker Carlson ’s Fox News show.

In lockstep with the president, Carlson also pronounced Revolver News “effectively the new Drudge Report, since the actual Drudge Report went completely insane,” and claimed “many of Drudge’s longtime readers have fled to Revolver News…to fill the void.” During a July segment on “what happened to Matt Drudge,” Carlson wrote him off as “now firmly a man of the progressive left,” saying that “at times his site is indistinguishable from the Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet.” (Drudge seemingly fired back at the host’s insults on Wednesday by featuring a headline on Fox’s hair and makeup department layoffs alongside a photo of Carlson looking stupefied under his signature Waspy bangs.)

Carlson isn’t the only member of right-wing media royalty to shun the man they once obsessively turned to for their daily news diet. In August, Rush Limbaugh heavily implied that Drudge crossed Trump not for ideological reasons, but for the money. “My email inbox every day, ‘What’s happening to Drudge, Rush?’And I tell people, ‘Have you heard of clicks?’” said the conservative talk-radio giant.

Limbaugh’s less-popular counterpart Mark Levin made similar accusations last week after Drudge heavily promoted Bob Woodward ’s new book, which revealed that Trump acknowledged the deadly nature of coronavirus in February while lying to the public by likening it to a common flu. “What’s this, the 5th or 6th book in recent weeks pushed by Drudge and the media and intended to elect Biden and smear Trump?” Levin tweeted. “Drudge sells out to big media, betrays conservatives who made his site popular. Hawking 60 Minutes and Woodward. There’s no longer any reason for the existence of that website,” he added on Sunday. It appears the Drudge splash that teed off Levin’s explosion was a headline that described Woodward’s book, Rage, as a “Brutal Look Inside White House Chaos” and promoted an excerpt about Trump’s “COVID Cover-Up” bombshell.

Ironically, in one of Drudge’s last media appearances, he spoke to Alex Jones in his Austin studio—but true to form, he remained off-camera and did the entire interview from "literally in the shadows, behind a curtain”—and told the Infowars founder, “You’re not alone. Limbaugh, [Michael] Savage, [Sean] Hannity, Levin…. I’m friends with all of them.”

Counter to his peers’ claims that his anti-Trump pivot is a self-interested move, Drudge’s traffic has gone down significantly in the past year. TheRighting, a site dedicated to analyzing and tracking the popularity of top conservative media outlets, reported that the Drudge Report has experienced a 38% decline from its almost 2.4 million unique visits in July 2019, to less than 1.5 million unique visitors in July of this year.

The site’s explicit defiance toward Trump and his administration, and the president’s rebukes in turn, are almost certainly a contributing factor in this downward trend. But another recent massive change to the conservative media landscape might also have a hand in Drudge’s decreasing readership. There is now a sizable portion of the GOP base that has swallowed the mind-altering QAnon conspiracy theory, meaning that relatively mainstream conservative sites like the Drudge Report just don’t give them the same high that was once sufficiently extreme to satiate their media appetite. For that subset of neurotically online pro-Trump lunatics, Drudge’s headlines might as well be cheap product cut with heaps of baking soda. The millions-of-members-strong QAnon Facebook groups, on the other hand, offer that pure Bolivian fish-scale, scratch-your-face-off content they crave.

— Melania Trump Sounds a Lot Like Her Husband in Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s New Book — Jesmyn Ward Writes Through Grief Amid Protests and Pandemic — How Trump’s Handling of White Supremacists Could Create a Homegrown Crisis — Ashley Etienne May Be Biden’s Deadliest Weapon Against Trump — What’s the Reality Behind Netflix Hit Selling Sunset ? — How to Abolish the Police , According to Josie Duffy Rice — The Pandemic Is Creating an Endless Summer in the Hamptons — From the Archive: The Perks and Perils of Being Donald Trump’s Daughter

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Caleb Ecarma

Staff reporter.

By Joe Pompeo

By Matthew Lysiak

By Bess Levin

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Drudge Report, a Former Trump Ally, Looks to Biden

Matt Drudge and Donald Trump boosted each other four years ago. Now his site says, in prominent type, “The World Moves On.”

By Tiffany Hsu

Matt Drudge started showing signs that he had soured on President Trump months before the election. Since the vote, the fedora-topped media pioneer has seemed even more eager to distance himself and his site from the man in the White House.

“YOU’RE FIRED!” Drudge Report blared in a headline within minutes of CNN’s calling the election for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Saturday. For nearly 24 hours afterward, that headline remained at the top of the site. In addition, a screenshot of the Drudge Report main page, with the “YOU’RE FIRED!” headline, has been the only tweet on the @DRUDGE Twitter account since Saturday.

In his 25-year career, Mr. Drudge has proved himself an expert aggregator, a digital journalist who links to articles plucked from the web. And he has done it with style, packaging his links with tabloid-poetry headlines that make readers click.

After the “YOU’RE FIRED!” headline, Drudge Report turned this week to the coming transfer of power.

THE WORLD MOVES ON.

Americans pivot from red-hot Trump to Biden’s seasoned cool.

Trump defied gravity; now falls back to earth, future TBD.

Dogs will return to White House: Biden’s German shepherds!

Four years ago, Drudge Report heralded Mr. Trump’s “rock-star welcome in Florida” and linked to coverage of his rallies. The journalist Carl Bernstein credited Mr. Drudge’s support as a key part of Mr. Trump’s political rise, and Mr. Trump called Mr. Drudge “a great gentleman.”

Drudge Report started distancing itself from the president last year, a development that was not lost on Mr. Trump, who said on Twitter in April: “I gave up on Drudge (a really nice guy) long ago, as have many others.” Conservative sites accused Mr. Drudge of being an agent of the left.

Now Drudge Report is filled with headlines that describe the outgoing president as “bitter” and “not a good loser.” Several links lead to articles debunking Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations of election fraud.

Mr. Drudge, who rarely gives interviews, did not reply to requests for comment. His recent work shows him ready to close the chapter on the current president and focus on the president-elect.

On Wednesday, his site included two lines of commentary — prominently displayed, in red type — that did not link to an external story and compared Mr. Biden favorably to the conservative hero Ronald Reagan.

Biden now up to 50.8 percent of popular vote, topping Reagan’s 50.7 percent in 1980 …

Is highest percentage for challenger since FDR in 1932 …

Tiffany Hsu is a media reporter for the business desk, focusing on advertising and marketing. Previously, she covered breaking business news. Before joining The Times, she wrote about the California economy for The Los Angeles Times. More about Tiffany Hsu

Matt Drudge Has Barely Changed Anything About The Drudge Report In The Last 20 Years. This Summer, He Upended Its Advertising Business.

A change to the secretive publisher’s business has revealed new details about his operation and is attracting scrutiny from the ad industry.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

The Drudge Report, with its Web 1.0 design offering a single page of links, is one of the enduring internet media business success stories. Two decades after rising to prominence for breaking news of the Bill Clinton– Monica Lewinsky affair, it remains one of the most popular websites in the United States and a key source of right-wing ideas for its readers, including President Donald Trump .

Owner Matt Drudge is also still adept at attracting attention, such as last week when his was the only major news site to post the El Paso, Texas, Walmart shooter’s manifesto. But the site has always resisted the temptation to build anything beyond the simplest business of selling display advertising on a single homepage.

Now, Drudge has quietly flipped the switch on perhaps the biggest change he’s ever made: He’s ditched his longtime advertising partner for a new representative, in the process revealing new details about his business and attracting scrutiny of how his site operates.

The reclusive publisher does not disclose revenue figures, but estimates put the site’s annual haul well into the realm of millions of dollars per year. Pathmatics, a marketing intelligence platform, estimates that over the past 12 months the site generated more than $30 million in ad revenue. Another estimate from the Global Disinformation Index , to be published in a report next month, pegs revenue at $9 million per year.

In a surprising turn, Drudge Report removed ads between the end of May and mid-July, according to Danny Rogers, a cofounder of the Global Disinformation Index, a project that’s analyzing domains to generate “risk ratings of the world’s media sites.” After noticing an absence of ads on Drudge around May 31, “we didn’t see any ads on Drudge until about July 12,” Rogers told BuzzFeed News.

During that period, Drudge cast off his advertising representative of close to 20 years, Intermarkets, in favor of a new and unknown company, Granite Cubed. It has no record in the digital ad industry, was only registered as a company in March of this year, and lists no staff or owners on its websites. Yet it just landed one of the biggest websites in the US.

“Any time a 20-year relationship comes to an end is certainly a surprising turn of events,” said Jay Friedman, president of Goodway Group , a digital agency that specializes in programmatic media buying.

Corporate records show that Granite Cubed is owned by Margaret Otto. She and her husband, Adrian, have a business association with the Drudge family that goes back years. The couple acquired Refdesk, a reference website founded by Bob Drudge, Matt’s father, in 2017. They also operated a company that began hosting the Drudge Report in 1999 and later added Breitbart as a customer. (The couple did not answer questions about whether they still own that hosting company or if it’s still hosting Drudge or Breitbart.)

Adrian Otto is the technical director of Google Cloud. He told BuzzFeed News he is not involved with Granite Cubed. Upon joining Google in 2017 from Rackspace, he said, he “stopped operating [his] other business interests” and is no longer involved with “hosting duties” for other websites. Otto was previously listed as the technical contact in the domain registration of breitbart.com, and was thanked by name in the foreword to Andrew Breitbart’s book about Hollywood.

“I knew Andrew Breitbart when he was alive, and helped him with some technical work,” Otto said.

Margaret Otto declined to discuss her company’s plans for Drudge Report or Refdesk, which she said is also represented by Granite. She wouldn’t say if she represents other websites or answer other questions, such as whether Matt or Bob Drudge were shareholders in Granite.

“We respect our customer’s privacy, and therefore, cannot comment on the other questions,” she said in an email.

Friedman said the connections between the Ottos and Drudges raise a question of whether the move to Granite Cubed is “a relationship play [or] a revenue maximization play,” given that today’s representation firms need to be “incredibly technically savvy and have a really good grasp on how to [succeed] in an automated ad market.”

Drudge was characteristically silent when emailed by BuzzFeed News for comment about his new advertising partner and the strategy for his site. His old partners were also hesitant to speak, reinforcing how one of the web’s most influential websites remains in many ways a one-man black box.

“Intermarkets no longer represents DrudgeReport.com, and it is our policy to not discuss former clients with the media,” said Kevin Lucido, the CEO of Intermarkets, which represents other conservative publishers, such as the Media Research Center and the Political Insider.

For his part, Bob Drudge said in an email, “I am retired and have no comment.”

It all makes for a startling shift for a publisher best known for a strategy rooted in changing nothing about his site’s operation. It’s also causing the ad industry to look closely at the mysterious new firm and its high-profile customer.

Friedman said Granite Cubed’s lack of a track record and profile in the industry will be a challenge if it tries to sell ad space directly to brands and agencies. “Certainly if you decide to go to big brands and sell directly, the Granite Cubed thing is going to be challenging. [Brands] get 100 requests a week for meetings and this probably isn’t going to float to the top,” even if they’re representing Drudge, he said.

Others in the industry say they had concerns about Drudge long before the switch to Granite. A manager at another ad tech company told BuzzFeed News he blocked the Drudge Report from its systems in 2017 due to “unacceptable auto-refreshing practices.”

After being loaded in a web browser, Drudge’s site automatically reloads itself after two minutes. The manager said the frequent refresh rate for Drudge Report raised concerns about the number of ads being loaded that were actually able to be viewed by users.

“The page was refreshing approximately every 120 seconds, with no consideration given to user activity. The user could have it open in a background tab and it would accrue [ad] impressions all day long,” said the manager, who requested anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to the media about specific websites.

The manager said they also removed refdesk.com from the platform due to similar concerns.

Drudge, Granite, and Intermarkets declined to comment on the refresh rate or the comments from the ad tech company manager.

In an interview with Ad Age last year , Erik Requidan, an Intermarkets executive who helped oversee Drudge’s monetization efforts, spoke about how the site’s seemingly low-tech design belied a more “sophisticated” ad operation.

“What seems like a pretty simple thing on the surface is actually quite sophisticated and effective,” he said.

Contact Craig Silverman at [email protected] .

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A Dirty Little Secret About Drudge

It's no secret that for years, the Drudge Report drove conservative (and often mainstream) media news cycles. If Drudge was talking about it, you could bet everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to PJ Media was also discussing it. In fact, there was a symbiotic relationship between Drudge's aggregated links and the pages of most conservative media outlets. Pretty much everyone was either getting story ideas from Drudge or sending him stories (often via AOL Instant Messenger), hoping he'd link them. 

A Drudge link day was always a good one for a website. In the early days of PJ Media, before we had the sophisticated technology we do now, a link would crash our servers. Back then, our tech guys would get an email alert anytime we got a Drudge link so they could fortify our site against the barrage of people swarming to read our stories. 

I remember my first Drudge link. I wrote something criticizing John Kasich, then my governor (and the son of a mailman). I was so excited that I printed out the page and hung it on my refrigerator. It ranked up there with my first mentions by Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Those were heady times. 

For a few years, Drudge links made up a rather large percentage of traffic to our site. We'd get a link every day or two. Sometimes multiples. A link at the top of the page, "above the fold," could bring in hundreds of thousands of readers—and no small amount of revenue. 

Many of you will recall that Drudge at first did everything he could to promote Donald Trump. Then something happened, some sort of falling-out that no one ever really got to the bottom of, and Matt Drudge turned on the president. That was in 2019, a year of big changes for Drudge. There were rumors (still unconfirmed) that the site had been sold. Drudge changed its ad provider and began to lean more liberal and more favorable toward mainstream media. That same year, PJ Media became part of the Townhall Media family and the links stopped—abruptly. Literally on the day of the sale. Whoever was running Drudge at the time, whether Matt or some minimum-wage intern, apparently had some sort of grudge against Townhall and he/they even dropped us from the blogroll at the bottom of the page. Petty, vindictive, and, if I'm being honest, rather costly to our bottom line. 

Now, if you go to the Drudge Report, you'll find links to a bunch of left-wing UK sites and well-funded mainstream media sites like the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the New York Post. Good for them, I guess. For whatever reason, Matt Drudge, who was reportedly apolitical and more interested in the success of his site than any agenda, decided to tank the site. A comparison of Similiar Web (a site that ranks websites based on various metrics) shows that Drudge was listed as #41 in the nation with 164 million visits in October 2018. Currently,  the site ranks at #145 ,  with 51 million visits in October 2023. That's a major, major drop. 

I'm not losing any sleep over any of this, and I trust you're not either. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share this background with you to demonstrate how it's not just the Left that's hurting our bottom line with their Big Tech censorship and demonization. Sometimes, the hits come from inside the house. At least Drudge used to be in the conservative house. Now, it's anyone's guess what's going on with that site. 

While you're here, check out our Cyber Monday VIP membership sale. Today, we're offering a 60% discount with the promo code CYBERMONDAY60. The sale gets you a year of VIP Gold for about $36 – less than 70 cents per week . Just 70 cents a week for VIP Gold level access to all six of our sites – PJ Media, Townhall, RedState, Twitchy, HotAir, and Bearing Arms! 

That's hundreds of articles a day from your favorite conservative authors, plus a treasure trove of VIP members-only articles, podcasts, and more. Sign up here . 

Drudge, smudge. Thanks to loyal readers like you, we can tell him to go pound sand. 

Paula Bolyard is the editor of PJ Media. Follow her on Twitter/X . For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

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Drudge Report

American news aggregation website / from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, dear wikiwand ai, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:.

Can you list the top facts and stats about Drudge Report?

Summarize this article for a 10 year old

The Drudge Report (stylized as DRUDGE REPORT ) is a U.S.-based news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge , [4] and run with the help of Charles Hurt [2] and Daniel Halper . [5] The site was generally regarded as a conservative [6] [7] [8] publication, though its ownership and political leanings have been questioned following business model changes in mid-to-late 2019. [9] The site consists mainly of links to news stories from other outlets about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists.

The Drudge Report originated in 1995 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. [3] It was the first news source to break the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal to the public, after Newsweek decided to "kill the story". [10]

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Bias of Drudge Report

Drudge Report

How we determined this rating:

• Independent Review
• Community Feedback:   ratings
• AllSides has medium confidence in this bias rating.

Unless otherwise noted, this bias rating refers only to online news coverage, not TV, print, or radio content.

The source either does not show much media bias, displays a balance of articles with left and right biases, or equally balances left and right perspectives in its reporting.

Center doesn't mean better! A Center media bias rating does not necessarily mean a source is totally unbiased, neutral, perfectly reasonable, or credible, just as Left and Right don't necessarily mean extreme, wrong, unreasonable, or not credible. AllSides encourages people to read outlets across the political spectrum.

About Drudge Report's Bias Rating

What a "center" rating means, bias reviews, community feedback, confidence level, additional information.

• Ownership & Funding

Articles from Drudge Report

Drudge Report is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center.

Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Center either do not show much predictable media bias , display a balance of articles with left and right biases, or equally balance left and right perspectives.

• Drudge Report Bias Rating Moved from Lean Right to Center Following 2023 AllSides Bias Analysis and Editorial Review

Drudge Report Rated Lean Right in Aug. 2018 Editorial Review

Drudge report bias rating moved from lean right to center following allsides bias analysis and editorial review.

In June 2023, AllSides moved Drudge Report’s AllSides Media Bias Rating™ from Lean Right to Center. An April-May 2023 AllSides Drudge Report Bias Analysis found the news aggregator displayed articles from news sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ on the left much more than outlets in the center or on the right. The results lead to an Editorial Review of Drudge Report. The AllSides review panel issued an overall AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center ( +0.93 ) for Drudge Report.    The Editorial Review found Drudge Report displayed bias by sensationalist story choices and word choices , though the sensationalism was often nonpartisan in nature.

Bias Analysis Summary

AllSides analyzed the source of 280 articles that appeared on DrudgeReport.com’s homepage April 26 to May 9, 2023. Of those, 49% of articles came from sources on the left and 10% from sources on the right – indicating a curation bent to the left of center.

On the homepage, 3% of articles were from Left-rated sources, 46% from Lean Left-rated sources, 26% from Center sources, 7% from Lean Right sources, 3% from Right-rated sources, and 14% from sources not rated by AllSides.

The top sources curated on Drudge Report were the following (note: ratings at the time of analysis; some ratings may have changed):  the Washington Post (Lean Left), The Associated Press (Lean Left), Wall Street Journal (Center),   CNBC (Center), Bloomberg (Lean Left), the New York Times (Lean Left), Mediaite (Lean Left), The New York Post (Lean Right), Reuters (Center), and CNN (Lean Left) .

Editorial Review Summary

The Editorial Review found numerous examples of sensationalism in story choice and word choice . Reviewers on the right and center agreed that even though the articles were often sourced from outlets on the left, the story choice largely appealed to conservative or right-of-center narratives. 

Reviewers on the left and center noted that Drudge Report seemed anti-establishment, anti-Biden, anti-Elon Musk, anti-Trump, but pro-LGBT and pro-Desantis. 

A reviewer on the left said, “I dont think it’s meant to be serious, it’s meant to be fun.”

The reviewers noted that Drudge Report displayed bias that does not fit easily into AllSides bias rating system, as it relies more on sensationalism than overt partisanship. 

Drudge Report was given a Lean Right AllSides Media Bias Rating following an  Editorial Review in August 2018.

Despite its reputation as being very right/conservative, the AllSides panel noted that the Drudge Report regularly features news stories that are mostly being covered by outlets AllSides rates on the left. The panel found that the Drudge Report often aggregated stories from outlets we rated as Left or Lean Left at the time of review, including The Huffington Post , The Washington Post , NBC , and more. While the Drudge Report did feature news stories and articles from sources on the left, it also featured lots of stories from sources with a Right, Lean Right, or Center AllSides Media Bias Rating™ , including Fox News , The Wall Street Journal , and Breitbart .

In fact, upon first looking at the Drudge Report, at least one member of the AllSides panel initially thought that the Drudge Report might warrant a Lean Left or Center bias rating. This initial instinct is consistent with a  2005 UCLA study  which found the Drudge Report has a Lean Left media bias; read more about that study here .

The AllSides editorial panel noted that the Drudge Report often uses sensational stories or language in its headlines and the stories it chooses to feature. Some members of the AllSides panel expressed concerns about the Drudge Report publishing sensationalist or fake news .

Top of Page

As of December 2023, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for Drudge Report. On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Center bias.

As of December 2023, AllSides has medium confidence in our Center rating for Drudge Report. An Editorial Review or Blind Bias Survey has affirmed this rating, or multiple reviews have returned differing results. If we perform more bias reviews and gather consistent data, this confidence level will increase.

Drudge Report is a news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Joseph Curl and Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events, as well as links to many columnists. Occasionally, Drudge authors new stories himself based on tips. The Report originated in 1996 as a weekly subscriber-based email dispatch. It was the first news source to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public after Newsweek decided not to publish the story.

Drudge met Andrew Breitbart in Los Angeles during the 1990s and became his mentor, with Breitbart later helping to run the Drudge Report. 

UCLA Study on Drudge Report Finds Center / Lean Left Bias Due to Aggregation

A 2005 UCLA stud y found that Drudge Report has a center/lean left bias, due to the website aggregating news from other media outlets. The study's lead author was Tim Groseclose, formerly UCLA faculty and currently Adam Smith Chair at George Mason University's Mercatus Center.

The study authors wrote (emphasis ours):

Another result, which appears anomalous, is not so anomalous upon further examination. This is the estimate for the Drudge Report, which at 60.4, places it approximately in the middle of our mix of media outlets and approximately as liberal as a typical Southern Democrat, such as John Breaux (D-LA). We should emphasize that this estimate reflects both the news flashes that Matt Drudge reports and the news stories to which his site links on other web sites. In fact, of the entire 311 think-tank citations we found in the Drudge Report, only five came from reports written by Matt Drudge. Thus, for all intents and purposes, our estimate for the DrudgeReport refers only to the articles to which the Report links on other web sites. Although the conventional wisdom often asserts that the Drudge Report is relatively conservative, we believe that the conventional wisdom would also assert that—if confined only to the news stories to which the Report links on other web sites—this set would have a slant approximately equal to the average slant of all media outlets, since, after all, it is comprised of stories from a broad mix of such outlets.

Previous AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ for Drudge Report

AllSides previously rated The Drudge Report as having a  Right media bias. We switched its bias rating to Lean Right following the Aug. 2018 Editorial Review .

Third-Party Accusations of Bias

The Drudge Report has been criticized in the past for running stories that were hoaxes, poorly sourced, or unfactual , including a theory that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, a hoax about a former prostitute who claimed her son was fathered by Bill Clinton, and a false statement that an undocumented immigrant started the October 2017 Northern California wildfires.

Bias of Drudge Report's Audience

According to a  2014 Pew Research study , the clear majority of Drudge Report's audience (74%) is right-of-center (by comparison, 26% of all Pew panelists were right-of-center). 8% of  Drudge Report's audience is left or left-of-center (compared with 38% of all respondents to the survey). Roughly 18% of Drudge Report's audience holds political values consistent with the political center or exhibit mixed values (compared with 36% of all panelists).

Drudge Report Ownership and Funding

Owner: Matt Drudge

• December 3, 2023 | The Latest Fact Checks curated by Media Bias Fact Check 12/03/2023 (Weekend Edition)
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• December 2, 2023 | MBFC’s Weekly Media Literacy Quiz Covering the Week of Nov 26th – Dec 2nd
• December 2, 2023 | The Latest Fact Checks curated by Media Bias Fact Check 12/02/2023 (Weekend Edition)
• December 2, 2023 | Daily Source Bias Check: Democracy Docket

Drudge Report – Bias and Credibility

Right-center bias.

These media sources are slightly to moderately conservative in bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.  See all Right-Center sources.

• Overall, we rate the Drudge Report Right-Center Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that more frequently favor the right. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to occasionally using poor sources with failed fact checks.

Detailed Report

Bias Rating: RIGHT-CENTER Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY

Founded in 1995 as one of the first independent web-only news sources, The Drudge Report is a politically conservative American news aggregation website run by Matt Drudge. The site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international media about politics, entertainment, and current events; it also has links to many columnists. Occasionally, Drudge authors new stories himself, based on tips.  The Drudge Report focuses on sensationalized stories with a right-wing bias. Matt Drudge and Charles Hunt edit the website .

In 2016, Matt Drudge was a strong supporter of Donald Trump; however, in 2018, Drudge began distancing himself from Trump and openly criticized  him , primarily for Trump’s broken promises on the border wall and immigration.

Due to this change in position, some strong Trump supporters have labeled The Drudge Report as the progressive left. For example, Conservative/Libertarian Trump supporter Tucker Carlson stated that  Matt Drudge is “firmly a man of the progressive left,” with the conservative Fox News host comparing the Drudge Report founder to The Daily Beast or “any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company.”

Read our profile on the United States government and media.

Funded by / Analysis

The Drudge Report is owned by Matt Drudge and is funded through online advertising.

Analysis / Bias

In review, the Drudge Report typically provides hyperlinks to external news sources, in which Matt Drudge writes the lead in headlines. In the past, almost all news stories favored the right and linked to right-leaning sources. Drudge is also frequently linked to conspiracy sources such as ZeroHedge and Infowars and Questionable sources, with very poor fact-check records, such as Breitbart , WND , and the Gateway Pundit .

Today, the Drudge Report typically links to more credible, lower-biased sources such as the Associated Press , Reuters , The Atlantic , and Fox News . However, there are still times when they publish the Questionable Breitbart as well as the Daily Mail .

Drudge Report also publishes columns from a wide range of journalists such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Ben Shapiro on the right and Paul Krugman and Maggie Haberman on the left. For the most part, the majority are right-leaning columnists, with many who have poor track records with fact-checkers.

Although the Drudge Report no longer supports Donald Trump, they clearly favor the right based on story selection and the right-leaning columnists that dominate the website. A review of 50 articles revealed that 16 favored the right and 9 favored the left, with the rest falling into a non-political category. In general, the Drudge Report has moderated toward a more Right-Center stance since the last review.

Finally, in the past, the Drudge Report has also promoted numerous debunked conspiracy theories such as The President Obama Birther conspiracy and that Undocumented children are violent criminals . A review of articles over the last two years indicates they have not failed a fact check and do not regularly publish conspiratorial content.

Failed Fact Checks (None recently)

• “Reporters rehearse questions with White House press (secretary).” – PANTS ON FIRE
• “Says Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald “Sterling is a Democrat.” – PANTS ON FIRE
• A photograph shows children holding guns on the US-Mexico border. – FALSE
• Is President Obama’s trip to India going to cost $200 million per day? – FALSE
• BREAKING: Illegal Muslim From Iran Arrested For Starting California Wildfire – PANTS ON FIRE

Overall, we rate the Drudge Report Right-Center Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that more frequently favor the right. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to occasionally using poor sources with failed fact checks. (7/19/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 9/09/2022)

Source: https://www.drudgereport.com/

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Last Updated on May 24, 2023 by Media Bias Fact Check

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Did Drudge Report and Fox News turn blue in 2020?

Once seen as staunchly republican, the news site and cable news network raised eyebrows in their coverage of trump.

President Donald Trump speaks during a Fox News Channel town hall at the Scranton Cultural Center on Thursday, March 5, 2020, in Scranton, Pa.

Evan Vucci, Associated Press

Once a reliable place to find unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton, the news aggregator Drudge Report mocked both President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani in recent weeks.

Meanwhile Fox News, long seen as a booster of conservatism, has become a target of the president, who cheers every decline in ratings and is rumored to be considering starting a media company that would compete with Fox.

Have Drudge and Fox, like voters in Georgia, turned blue, or at least faint purple?

If so, it would be a remarkable change, given that a subset of Americans called “ Fox News Republicans ” have been the president’s most loyal supporters. And as far back as 2006, the website founded by Matt Drudge has been seen as powerhouse of Republican support, with ABC News reporting that year that “Drudge Report sets the tone for national political coverage.”

It’s clear that Drudge Report is no longer a booster of Trump, who has called the website “fake news” this year although it has been credited with helping him get elected in 2016.

It’s not clear, however, if Matt Drudge is still the owner, or involved on a daily basis. There’s been speculation the site has been sold, although others say Drudge still owns and manages the site he founded in 1995.

As for Fox, the network recently changed its slogan to “ Standing Up for What’s Right ,” which some people saw as a dig at Trump, and by extension, his loyal supporters. Trump voters also took issue with the network calling states for Biden on election night.

Given their other content, it’s unlikely that Drudge Report and Fox have radically shifted to the left. As they say in medical school, “ when you hear hoofs, think horse, not zebra ,” meaning the simplest explanation is more likely than the more uncommon one.

As such, it’s more probable that the news outlets soured on Trump — as some other prominent Republicans did — not on conservatism in general.

But the perception that Drudge Report and Fox News have abandoned their base is getting oxygen from people who want to compete with them.

Drudge Report, a former Trump ally, is ready to move on. The site is filled with headlines that describe the outgoing president as "bitter" and "not a good loser.'" https://t.co/VSoJyMzWgN pic.twitter.com/SKBfNlq43H — Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) November 12, 2020

Man of the Left?

Earlier this year, Ryan McMaken, writing on the blog of the Mises Institute , said Drudge Report has lost its edge, becoming instead a purveyor of predictable fare, spiced with “crisis porn.”

“It is now, for all practical purposes, a sister site to CNN.com or The Atlantic, ” McMaken wrote.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson went farther, in July calling Drudge “a man of the progressive left.”

“At times, his site is indistinguishable from The Daily Beast or any other woke propaganda outlet posing as a news company,” Carlson told Matthew Lysiak, the author of a biography on Drudge, “ The Drudge Revolution ,” released this year.

Lysiak did not interview the subject of his book. Drudge is famously reclusive and rarely grants interviews. But he did speak briefly to Florida journalist Bob Norman after he showed up unannounced at Drudge’s home.

As Norman recounted in an article in Columbia Journalism Review, he never saw Drudge when he was at the house, but called him later and told him he wanted to talk with him about Trump. “You and everybody else,” Drudge replied. When Norman said Drudge Report was supportive of Trump in 2016, Drudge said, “That was three years ago.”

“That response seemed rather telling, a clear distancing from the president. But Drudge wouldn’t go further,” Norman wrote.

In addition to Drudge Report’s increasingly frequent skewering of Trump, others have noticed the website has taken the pandemic seriously, unlike some of Trump’s supporters.

As one person wrote on Twitter, “Fox may have shifted to the center since 2016. Drudge Report was the biggest game changer. DR single-handedly made me deathly afraid of COVID-19 between February and May of this year.”

• Are you a Republican or a ‘Fox News Republican’?

Fox News, meanwhile, has regularly enraged the president with reporting that the president believes is biased against him. At one point, he said he was the “golden goose” responsible for the network’s historic ratings. (Fox surpassed the legacy networks in primetime for the third quarter of 2020, and in that same quarter, four of the five most-watched cable news shows belonged to Fox.)

And his anger was renewed on election night after Fox News was the first network to project that eventual President-elect Joe Biden would win Arizona.

According to the political website The Hill , the Trump campaign urged people to call Fox to ask them to withdraw the call. “The campaign also sent out talking points attacking the head of the Fox News decision desk and highlighting his past contributions to Democratic candidates,” Brett Samuels wrote for The Hill.

The president has urged his supporters to abandon Fox for other conservative outlets such as Newmax, and Mike Allen at Axios has reported that Trump wants to start a digital media company to compete with Fox. According to Allen, an unidentified source said, “He plans to wreck Fox. No doubt about it.”

To do so, however, would require convincing Trump supporters to abandon their principle source of news.

According to an October report from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 40% of Republicans say they trust Fox News more than any other news source, comprising what the institute’s founder and CEO Robert P. Jones called “a party within a party.”

And those “Fox New Republicans” were largely supportive of the president.

Nearly all Republicans who report trusting most in Fox News for television news approved of the job Trump is doing in office, including 82% who strongly approve, according to the PRRI survey. (Among all other Republicans, 78% approved of the president and 42% strongly approved.)

Drudge alternative

If Trump decides to compete with what he perceives as anti-Trump media, he’ll have company. Conservative podcaster Dan Bongino is offering Trump supporters an alternative to Drudge Report in his Bongino Report , launched last year.

A news aggregator like Drudge Report, the site recently had headlines including “Biden Campaign Manager Called for Mandatory Gun Seizures” and “RINO Mitt Romney Scolds Trump for Not Accepting Election Irregularities Without Investigation.”

In announcing the launch, Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and police officer, said on Twitter, “Drudge has abandoned you. I NEVER will.”

Bongino is regularly among the top 10 performing Facebook posts on a given day, according to the Twitter account that tracks them. He’s also a regular commentator on Fox News, which shows the challenge that Trump and his supporters face if they try to extract themselves from Fox and Drudge Report, given their longtime entwinement. When Trump criticizes Fox, for example, he’s criticizing the employer of his ally Sean Hannity, a top-performing Fox host.

But a Biden presidency may be what reunites the team. Recently, Drudge Report has been publishing flattering photos of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. If the past predicts the future, that will change.

And a recent article by Sarah Ellison and Jeremy Barr in The Washington Post suggests that Fox News will soon be making Trump happy again when it casts a critical eye on the Biden administration.

“Fox thrives when it is in the opposition because they have a real-time bad guy to beat up on,” former CNN President Jonathan Klein said in the Post. “A Biden win would be great for Fox’s business.”