Media Manipulation Watch: Drudge's Magical Changing Headline

Posted by Ryan Powers, Think Progress at 4:32 PM on February 25, 2009.

The markets opened this morning with a sustained decline, which Reuters attributed to a new “report showing yet more deterioration in the housing market.” Matt Drudge, however, wanted to blame it on President Obama, so he posted an auto updating graph of the Dow Jones Industrial average. Under that, in large block letters, Drudge asked, “WAS IT SOMETHING HE SAID?” But as the day passed, the market rebounded, and Drudge was left suggesting that Obama was responsible for the rally:

Drudge couldn’t let that stand so, several minutes later, he changed the headline:

But then, shortly before the closing at 4:00 PM, the market declined again. What did Drudge do? He hurriedly changed it back, typos and all:

Matt Yglesias wrote recently, “Not only is it obviously stupid for political commentators to be assessing the quality of economic policy by tracking the ups-and-downs of the stock market but the fact that the commentators who want to do this keep wanting to specifically use the Dow Jones Industrial Average just highlights their ignorance. Not only is there no particular significance to the stock market as such, but there’s no particular significance to this index.”

Tagged as: rally, drudge report, drudge, media mattters, headlines