Silly Suck-Up-To-Drudge Moment Of The Day
February 29, 2008 -- 10:56 AM EST // //

As noted below, this blog bestows the much-coveted Silly Suck-Up-To-Drudge Moment Of The Day Award when circumstances warrant -- when, for instance, journalists deliberately tailor their copy to get linked by Drudge or when they give him gratuitous plugs or overstate his influence in some grotesque way.

And today's award goes to...

The Telegraph's Toby Harnden!!!

He gets the honor for writing the following:

He remains an elusive, mysterious figure but the internet pioneer is arguably the single most powerful journalist -- though his detractors even deny that is his occupation -- in the world.

Yep -- Drudge is the most powerful journalist "in the world." More powerful than New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, Times edit page editor Andy Rosenthal, Washington Post chief Len Downie, WaPo edit page editor Fred Hiatt, CNN president Jonathan Klein, Fox News chief Roger Ailes, the editors of Time and Newsweek, the top executives and producers at all the major networks, etc., etc...

And, as always, those hailing Drudge's "power" are the very same people who are giving him that power by pretending that his reporting is in any way valid. Harnshaw, for instance, writes the following about Drudge and his silly "scoop" that Hillary staffers had "circulated" a picture of Obama in Somali garb...

By the end, he had become Hillary Clinton's weapon of choice against Mr Obama.

Right, but Hillary's campaign denied that this happened, and there's no evidence whatsoever that this happened beyond confirmed-fact-inventor Drudge's word for it, Mr. Harnshaw. You grant him this power by pretending that what he reported is confirmed truth.

Needless to say, Mr. Harnshaw's story got its Drudge link.

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