Internet newsman Matt Drudge has done more to help Donald Trump secure the GOP nomination than any other media outlet, including Fox News, noted journalist Carl Bernstein said Wednesday.
“Fox has driven Trump’s campaign less than Drudge,” he said on CNN. “A large measure of why Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge.”
“Drudge is really the great new factor in terms of media,” he added.
Bernstein, who is most famous for breaking and co-authoring the story that brought down the Nixon administration, said the Drudge Report makes no bones about its pro-Trump bias.
“Drudge, that site, has been unapologetically in Trump’s pocket from the beginning,” he said.
“And I would say that a large measure of why Donald Trump is the nominee goes to Matt Drudge in much the way that Fox has,” he said. He said he’s not sure Drudge is a kingmaker, but said, “it is an influence unequaled.”
Television, print and online news have all given an enormous amount of airtime to covering the Trump campaign. Media have rushed to cover the candidate so much, in fact, that the data analytics group mediaQuant estimated in March that Trump had earned about $2 billion in free press coverage.
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Trump’s earned media — that is, news mentions in print, on television and online — is “about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history,” the New York Times’ Nick Confessore and Karen Yourish reported.
To put Trump’s numbers in perspective, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had about $400 million in earned media for the whole of his 2008 presidential campaign.
CNN and Fox News have led cable media in mentions of the Republican nominee, with the former narrowly edging out the latter with the sheer volume of its coverage.
