Matt Drudge
From Media Giraffe
[edit] Matt Drudge SKY News interview
In November, 2007, Matt Drudge sat for a brief television interview on the British Sky News channel, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Here is a transcript of the interview, as recorded by The Media Giraffe Project.
RETURN TO MEDIA GIRAFFE PROJECT PROFILE OF MATT DRUDGE
ARTICLE:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91248-1293633,00.html
LINK TO VIDEO: http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-1293628,00.html
PHOTO FROM SKY TELEVISION: 
Anna Botting: Matt, you’ve come all the way from Israel Festival now haven’t you, but based in the states before. Now then, if anyone’s not heard of him, I’m just looking your website right now. 16,891,000 people in the past 24 hours.
Matt Drudge: No, visits, loads, the times that the page has been visited, which is a couple of million people.
AB: Okay, still quite a lot.
MD: It’s a lot. It’s become sort of a international clearing ground of news. Not just American news, not just British news, not just European news, anywhere news. I mean this to me is the future – no boundaries. Of course I’m American-centered and 85% of my viewers would come from America, but as you can see the French strikes, I’ve been following that. There are a lot of international stories that have appeal in America.
AB: What’s the secret then of a good news website?
MD: To keep it going, keep it jumping. Sometimes I find myself updating hundreds of times a day, hundreds of times a day. To be completely live almost as if you are animated with text.
AB: I’m surprised you didn’t come in here with your laptop. Do you go to bed with it?
MD: I took a break.
AB: Does it make you twitchy that you took a break?
MD: No, because I’ve been doing it for almost 13 years and I’ve learned how to pace myself because there are no time zones anymore. I mean, what time zone are we applying this broadcast to? I mean, I’ve watched you all over the world. So someone’s waking up now and someone’s going to sleep.
AB: Now one report you’ve quoted on your website tonight from the Washington Post suggesting the print media could be dead in 10 years. Do you really believe that?
MD: Well that wasn’t me, that was the former broadcast anchorman for NBC who is retired. We’ve had a whole generation now of broadcasters in America who have retired and there’s a new crop coming up -- and he sees print dead. I certainly don’t see that here in London with the Sun and three and a half million circulation a day. You really have to get to America and USA Today and Wall Street Journal to get half of those numbers. So London is a very vibrant newspaper town, where the States are having a transition to digital. And I think that’s the prediction –- simply 10 years or less. Simply, why are you printing when everything’s on a screen or now moving to a little telephone.
AB: The problem is though that anybody can set up a website, anybody can post something on youtube or similar websites as well. Who do you trust now?
MD: This is it. You really have to get to know where you’re getting you information, but this also applies to corporate broadcast. We’ve had tremendous disasters on CNN, and BBC, and retractions, the New York Times made up stories. So who do you trust at any level? It just comes with what you are familiar with and you have to read a lot of varied sources is what I do. In the course of a day I read 20 to 30 newspapers because you want to get different shades.
AB: Big election next year. How big a role do you think that the internet and websites will play in the way people make their decision on who to vote for?
MD: Well, it depends on what the broadcast outlets do and don’t do. Back in the last Clinton administration, during Lewinsky for instance which I had to break on the Internet because the other people wouldn’t –- if we’re again faced with corporations who don’t want to report real news the Internet will play a very valuable road in the underground catching real stories that are being spiked.
AB: Iain, do you agree with that?
Iain Dale: Absolutely, I mean if that story had happened here you’d have found the BBC in absolute traumas about it, whether they should report it. I’d hope SKY News would, some of the newspapers wouldn’t report it. But there are bloggers out there now who will report things that the political media want to keep quiet. There’s a cozy lobby system in Westminster village that keeps secrets that everyone in the Westminster village knows what there are, but out there in the wider world, you’re viewers don’t. so the internet medium for everyone to know what’s going on.
AB: But the problem then is that you begin to embody the worst of the web. You begin to embody rumors and scandal, things that can’t be confirmed, the things that possibly give the web a bad reputation.
MD: Oh, but why is that exclusive to the web domain? I mean we certainly see that in other media. That’s a 1990s discussion. We’re now in a totally new era where information is information. You just really have to set your own threshold in what you believe in, where you go for information. Because again, because you’re getting it from an established source doesn’t mean it’s true.
AB: And what about the future of people like me who broadcast on the old fashioned medium of televison?
ID: You’ll be okay, Anna. You’ll be here for years to come.
AB: I want to hear it from the man who’s been here for 13 years doing this! (laughs)
MD: You bring a lot of life. You bring it all to life. You know, you add such flare to the news. One of the reasons why I’m in London is that the media here is unparalleled. I mean, it surpasses New York, it surpasses all the other great cities of the world. This is media town.
AB: I’m not entirely sure our Chancellor will be agreeing with you right now.
