Reactions to Drop Drudge and the Prince Harry story
Posted by Jeff Quinton on March 1, 2008
Join the movement: Drop Drudge
Thanks to Venomous Kate for the graphic above. If you want the HTML to put it on your site, click here. There seems to be a pretty big backlash among bloggers toward Drudge in the past day or so, and some site have already posted the above logo and link.
Now for a roundup of reactions to my original post on this subject as well as the larger issues of Prince Harry’s deployment.
The news that Prince Harry, third in line to the throne, is fighting on the front lines (as he wanted/insisted) is very good news. He is to be commended for his determination to do what’s right and to be a real soldier. The media agreement in place to protect him and those serving with him and/or under his command was an excellent idea and kudos to those who made it happen. A raised finger salute to the people who leaked it to Drudge, and to Matt Drudge for willfully endangering the Prince and those with him. May you and those who leaked it to you soon find yourself in an enclosed space with SAS and others who care to express their opinion in a very, very personal manner. No linky love to you, a*****e.
Still, one longs for the old days when gentlemen’s agreements like this were honored for their own sake. Indeed, it’s somewhat surprising that the news blackout on this story was as successful as it has been. Allowing Harry to do his duty outside the spotlight and without creating a high profile target for the Taliban is a noble gesture and far outweighs whatever “public right to know” that would have justified breaking the embargo.
Why does Drudge hate the troops and want them in harm’s way?
Drop Drudge! It’s not like he isn’t asking for it.
Say what you will about the British Royal Family, but you’ve got have a certain respect for a guy whose willing to go into combat when, clearly, he doesn’t have to. He may not be the Prince Harry of the Birmoverse, but he’s pretty darn close.
And, I’ve got to agree with James Joyner that it’s unfortunate that Matt Drudge, or whoever, felt the need to break this story
It was pretty much inevitable that he was going to see action somewhere. The tradition of English royal princes proving themselves in war goes back to Crecy in 1346 when Edward III’s son (also Edward, and known as the Black Prince to avoid confusion) was hard pressed at the height of the battle.
His grandmother sent him there, and the Drudge Report is bringing him back. For ten weeks, the young man who is third in line for the throne has been soldiering in Afghanistan as the British press honored what used to be called a gentlemen’s agreement not to tell the world about it.
But the web site that outed Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky adventure has done the same for Prince Harry by citing an article in an obscure Australian magazine, “Prince Harry Fights on Front Lines in Afghanistan.”
After months of a consensual international media blackout, Matt Drudge revealed that Prince Harry has been “in Afghanistan for more than two months” — “to the fury of the Ministry of Defence and condemnation from the head of the British Army.” Harry is now being sent back to Britain.
A scoop is one thing…but by publicizing this, Drudge put every man Harry is serving with in danger.
Say what you will about the royals, Harry’s commitment to his military service is laudable. But when said royal is serving with other men, it puts ALL their lives in danger to reveal that he’s on active duty.
Does Drudge’s need to scoop trump soldiers’ lives? Now, thanks to Matt Drudge’s need for attention, the British army has to get him out of there. Drudge may not have been the first to get the story, but he described it as an exclusive, and since Drudge gets more traffic than the smaller outlets who blew the cover earlier, he bears a great deal of the responsiblity.
And shame on the rest of the U.S. press for pulling this story from Drudge and running with it.
Imagine if a liberal Web site had outed details of our war in Afghanistan, putting at risk the lives of US coalition soldiers? That’s what just happened, except it was the conservative Matt Drudge who did it.
Now, in case you’re wondering why they’re evacuating Harry, the reason is that he’s a prime target of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He was serving anonymously on the frontline. He was doing what his ancestors had done as well; fighting along side their soldiers.
The British media had agreed to a voluntary news blackout until the end of his term. After the three month tour, they’d write about it.
Drudge, being careless or only interested in the money in his own pocket, was unwilling to play by those rules and decided to publish the news nonetheless.
Prince Harry now has to be evacuated because he and his fellow soldiers are at great risk (the Taliban are, of course, willing to do whatever it takes to capture Harry).
As for the media ethics angle, Channel 4 newstool Jon Snow, whom old-school HA readers will remember from this almost comic display of pro-Palestinian bias, gives Drudge a pat on the back for having the stones he himself lacked to break the conspiracy of silence.
Like most normal human beings, I’m forever indebted to Matt Drudge for bringing us Monica Lewinsky, among other interesting stories. Over the past ten years, he’s gone where most media cowards dare not tread.
But what the hell was he thinking by revealing the fact Prince Harry was stationed in Afghanistan? Did we really need to know this?
I don’t think so.
Well, Harry’s Afghan adventure is now over since his cover has been blown.
[…]
Secret deployment. Get it? This is like when that schmuck Geraldo Rivera basically gave away coordinates of deployed troops on live television.
Actually, it’s worse.
When DOES “journalism” cross the line? Typically we’re told it’s when the news reports put people in danger. That was the case with Prince Harry of the UK (3rd in line to the throne). Even the typically obnoxious British press had agreed not to publicize his deployment until he returned lest Al Queda target him and put not only the Prince, but others at risk. Well, thank special thanks to the media outlets that outed the prince, and put both his life and the lives of those around him in greater danger. Apparently a prince and other people’s safety is irrelevant.
Endangering the lives of British troops for a sensational scoop about Prince Harry (about which the mainstream media had surprisingly kept quiet) is taking sensationalism too far. Way too far. It’s hardly different from the New York Slimes exposing secrets to the enemy.
The British people are furious with Channel 4’s Jon Snow for saying “thank God for Drudge,” and many have decided to boycott Snow and Channel 4. Why stop there? Matt Drudge was the one to spill the beans, after all.
[…]
Dump Drudge. He’s well past his prime, and breaking this story just shows his desperation. Who needs him?
Our American soldiers in Afghanistan won’t get their names splashed all over the front page of blabbermouth Drudge, but they deserve your attention and support.
I don’t share this reporter’s opinion extolling Matt Drudge from breaking the secrecy. Thanks to him, every jihidist in the Mideast will be gunning for him now. Unlike many leaders in the Western world, who has lived pillow-cushioned lives without the inconvenience of suffering a bloody nose, I would like leaders who have “real world” experiences.
I’m not British so I don’t have a dog in the fight vis a vie Prince Harry. But I do care very much about Drudge now jeopardizing Prince Harry’s life for the sake of a headline. This kind of reporting got a lot of flak when the NYT and the Boston Globe does it, and it deserves some here.
Plenty of people, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign, loves to leak stuff to Drudge, and he publishes them regularly. I hope he has a bit more discernment in reporting material that could endanger people’s lives.
UPDATE: Fraser says some of the most prominent British bloggers knew of Harry’s deployment and kept the news to themselves too. This ain’t a new media vs old media tussle, it’s common sense and, in this instance, a certain courtesy to a young soldier who wants to serve his country without imperiling his comrades. Nothing significant is gained by “breaking” an agreed embargo on this sort of thing and nothing lost by honouring it until such point as it expires or, as in this case, becomes moot.
UPDATE 2: Trusty, credible commenter Beth Noire, suggests gossip site Popbitch knew in December and scrubbed all references to Harry’s service from its chatroom.
It’s good to see that our high and mighty (Prince Harry) are in the trenches with the rest of us plebs, don’t you think? I doubt you’d see any Bush scion serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we know that Clinton avoided that era’s war quite deftly (as did Bush incidentally).
I hope Prince Harry doesn’t get hurt/injured/killed/captured mind you, that would be a debacle to say the least. I don’t think the Taleban would be merciful - in contrary to the Quran of course. You have to admire him though, he’s wanted to serve on the front lines, said he would quit if not allowed, and obviously stuck to his guns.
Like most U.S. troops Prince Harry is loyal to his fellow soldiers and demanded to be permitted to go to combat along with them.
Predictably, the British blame the American media for our general boorishness.
[…]
And between an asshole in fedora and believing in the Divine Rights of Kings, Matt Drudge wins any day.
But there’s something interesting about this leak. Drudge took it on himself to reveal operational information about an individual soldier - information that, not merely potentially, but in all foreseeable likelihood, would expose both him and his unit-mates to a considerable increased risk of attack - information the Defense Ministry considered so sensitive that they (perhaps over-protectively) felt they had to pull him from the region to protect his life after it was printed. And those fears, however much prompted by monarchist hypersensitivity, seem perfectly credible. And there was no good reason for it.
Drudge put a soldier and his mates in danger in order to publish a “scoop” that had no bearing at all on any issue of justifying significance. The story says nothing about any of the underlying controversies regarding the war - it was published for no reason than to gain attention for himself and to satisfy a superficial interest in the doings of celebrities.
Small as the issue is, in terms of justification it goes far beyond stories about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, or the Bush administration’s other abuses. Those stories revealed torture, sexual abuse, war crimes, and other systematic and secret crimes so repulsive that they had to be brought to light, because no decent nation can allow such crimes to go unknown or unremarked. The sources and writers who brought those stories forward are heroes, the more so where they had to defy secrecy and the legal strictures of the abusive regime to do it. And they were universally vilified for it, by Drudge himself and the other slime-crawlers of the right wing.
While the Brits are up in arms about the media revealing, thus terminating, Prince Harry’s active duty in Afghanistan, The BAG sees it as fortuitous.
Beyond the fact of the deployment itself, what has consequently been revealed is the fact that the media — in collusion with the U.K. government and military — was busy stockpiling a treasure trove of photos and videos to glorify Harry’s exploits in anticipation of a media big bang. To the extent the English establishment is in a snit, it’s over the inability now to formally leverage Harry’s pseudo-governmental and mega-celebrity status (not to mention, his sex appeal) to more singularly distract from the failing effort to stabilize Afghanistan and root out the Taliban and al Qaeda.
By the way, it was the Drudge Report that broke the embargo on the news that Prince Harry was stationed in Afghanistan. Never let it be said that Matt Drudge let discretion and the safety of the soldiers stand in the way of making a headline.
I’m a wee tad conflicted on the Harry end - I’m no great fan of the concept of having royals in general and would rather think of Harry Windsor as just another second lieutenant from a privileged background who will either turn out to be one of the good guys or one of the banes of the squaddies lives, depending on whether he has sh*t for brains or not. He gets no slack from me just for being a Windsor - but that said, kudos for going within a million miles of the shooting when he could’ve used his birthrate to stay safe in the UK. His uncle Andrew got the same kudos in the Falklands.
Still, I understand why he has now been withdrawn. As the BBC’s Jon Williams explains, and 2nd Lt. Windor’s nickname “Bullet Magnet” suggests, it’s not just about him.
[…]
Try a thought experiment. Replace “Harry Windsor” with, say “James McCain” and imagine his dad is president. Now imagine Drudge had leaked the location and unit of said presidential son on deployment in Iraq. Can you imagine the outrage? Drudge would be finished, if not in jail.
Shameless Slimeball of the Millennium
Harry didn’t have to spend his Christmas on his belly in the dirt and dogshit of Afghanistan; he volunteered for the army, as his forebears have for hundreds of years, at least partly out of a sense of duty and an awareness of his place in public life. That’s more than most of his critics can say. To hear a word like “duty” applied to the playboy Prince is strange and refreshing; many of us, to borrow a phrase from a famous soldier, too often use it as a punchline. We do indeed live in a world that has walls, even if we don’t always agree where they should be sited, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Despite myself, I’m strangely stirred by the fact that our royalty serve among them.
Today, there are many questions for Mr. Drudge from the British newspapers:
– Why did he blow Harry’s cover?
– Would he have done the same if it were the children of President Bush or Senator Hillary Clinton?
– What took him so long? (The secret was safe for 10 weeks).
We don’t do this stuff lightly - there are no other “voluntary agreements” in place at the moment, there’s nothing else we’re not telling you. Until yesterday, only a handful of people in the BBC knew about the story - trust me, keeping secrets from other journalists is hard work! Our job normally is to make these things public, not keep them from you. But this was never just about Prince Harry’s safety, it was also about the security of the soldiers serving with him. No editor wants to be responsible for increasing the risk they already face from the Taleban. Nor do I think our audiences would have thanked us for doing so.
These people just don’t get it. Several readers of Michelle Malkin’s site are just plain clue-less. It amazes me how people who think they are experts in some arena — and are not —, can get so much coverage from respectable sources. [OK, granted the liberal media does the same thing, I suppose I should not be surprised by this] Lots of piling on at Michelle’s site, most of it wrong headed.
Wrong Headed Thinking
Jeff Quinton suffers from blog-opia. It is a form of myopic thinking. The reasoning goes like this: I am a blogger, I use an RSS reader, I don’t like Drudge: therefore Drudge has jumped the shark and is of no value. Yes, I know you logicians out there are going nuts.
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Mr Quinton is either angry at Drudge for some perceived wrong — he leaked the Prince Harry story, and is getting kudos from Brit newsies, a prophet is not welcome in his own home I believe — , he doesn’t like blogs, or he is jealous of the Drudge’s page-views. Maybe a combination.
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Unfortunately it’s poor thinking like this that is killing the Conservative Philosophy. How dare the Drudge Report, actually report news. OH MY GAWD!!! Unreal. You would think Drudge had given out GPS co-ordinates on the Prince.
I suppose some just need to be upset about something all the time. Just another blogger over-estimating his usefulness. As for Web 2.0, it’s complete bull-crap. You would think Conservatives would see through the communal b.s. of the lefty IT peeps, but oh no. We have to be cool. Sheesh.
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Can you imagine if the Brits had acted like this during WWII? Would Teddy Roosevelt Jr have been respected for not going with his units during D-Day? Pffft. I am so disgusted with Michelle and her usual round of ‘me-too’ people.
I’m a little sickened by this lynch mob mentality that’s emerging among some “so called” conservatives who are now threatening to banish Matt Drudge for all eternity over his albeit foolish story on Prince Harry in Afghanistan..
I mean yeah, it was obviously poor judgment, & not a mistake I think I would have made, but God knows we all make them.
So would the first blogger to never have put his or her foot in their mouth please throw the first stone? Well Hmmm….. I think Matt is Pretty safe now..
Folks should be voicing their displeasure to Matt Drudge, but not lowering themselves to the level of vitriolic hate speech that we expect to hear from the likes of the Berkeley Ca. city council against our own military.
It just makes conservatives look more like the ravenous back stabbing Demoncrats when we start pig piling on one of our own as soon as they make a mistake.
Matt Drudge has done a lot of great things for both Conservatives & the Blogger world, even if he’s not a fan of everyone’s blogs.
Call him a blabbermouth, fine.. But a tabloid? That’s a wee bit extreme..
I think we owe the man just a little bit more respect than what’s being shown right now.The last thing we need is for Conservative bloggers to start adapting the elitist, self righteous attitude that is so pervasive in the MSM.
Just goes to show you how irresponsible a media purveyor Drudge is. He’d do anything for a few extra clicks, even if it puts a man in danger.
[…]
Nevermind that the Bush’s girls aren’t doing anything in Iraq, or Afghanistan or Mitt Romney’s kids aren’t there, or Chelsea Clinton too. Would that our elites gave anything other than lip service to the idea of public service, no?
No. And not because I endorse what Drudge did. Rather, I think whatever blame there is in this matter must fall on Drudge’s source. The sources were presumably parties to the agreement that kept details of the prince’s deployment out of the news for three months.
It was the sources who broke the agreement. Drudge was never part of that agreement. Someone had a duty to keept this quiet, but that someone was not Matt Drudge.
Who leaked it to Drudge, and why? That’s an interesting question, though I doubt we’ll ever know the answer. I’ve never known Drudge to burn a source. But if you’re looking for someone to blame in this affair, you need to ask yourself who that source might have been, and why they told Drudge.
Say what you like about the Windsors. They’re not Romneys.
I am all for the media and new media reporting the news and in particular news that the powers-that-be might be discomforted by. However reporting a wartime operation detail likely to increase the chance particular group of serving soldiers will attacked by the enemy (namely revealing the presence of a political ‘high value target’ in the war zone) fall way outside acceptable behaviour. Even if you oppose the war, such behaviour suggest you are not so much against the war as actually on the other side. It is at the very least socially despicable and quite frankly giving aid to an enemy in wartime. Unsurprisingly that is something far beyond the ken of a dim bulb like that self-important idiotarian ass Jon Snow.
No, really. I just don’t see the point in running the story about Prince Harry being in Afghanistan, and making him cut his tour short.
Yeah. Sign me on to the Drop Drudge movement. Not that I was reading him anyway, but now I won’t.
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Oh, I’m sure there are some Americans who would gladly participate in taking these assholes down a notch or two. It’s beyond belief that someone would put any servicemember’s life in danger for the sake of a petty “scoop” like that.
Today, after Drudge blew the secret, the British “Defense Ministry” had nothing better to do but tell Prince Harry it wasn’t safe enough for him there and he’d have to come home. Maybe they can station him on Antigua.
If you read this post yesterday, you know what I said about the atrocity that Matt Drudge committed this week. And you also know that I’m a Drudgeaholic, but I’m making myself go cold turkey and not read it anymore.
Instead of talking about it even more, I’m just going to link to a campaign to “Drop Drudge.”
As Prince Harry returned home today, British Radical Islamists threatened the young prince after it was announced that he was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan this week.
There’s much ado this weekend over Drudge’s “breaking” story concerning Prince Harry’s tour of duty.
For 10 weeks, the British news agencies honored an agreement reached with the Ministry of Defence to forego disclosure of Prince Harry’s front line position in Afghanistan in exchange for media access to the Prince during his deployment. Then Matt Druge, long known for sensationalist, tabloid tactics, decided to share Prince Harry’s posting with the world.
As a result of Drudge’s story, the Prince’s tour of duty was cut short to protect his safety as well as those of his fellow soldiers. Harry returned home safely this morning. It’s unknown at this time what his next posting will entail.
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Comment by Mark
The funniest thing about this is that Drudge did not even break the story. It was published in the first week of January by a site in Australia. You don’t see the gang attacking them, do you?
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Comment by Jim
Boycott Drudge
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