{"id":723,"date":"2007-11-26T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T16:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=723"},"modified":"2007-11-26T10:04:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T16:04:00","slug":"unfounded-lesbian-smears-sell-well-almost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/11\/unfounded-lesbian-smears-sell-well-almost\/","title":{"rendered":"Unfounded lesbian smears sell! (Well, almost)"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he Times<\/a> (of London) should have found itself generating big web traffic thanks to its print edition making the front page of Drudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So how did it (nearly) happen? With a little help from unfounded allegations of a lesbian affair involving Hillary Clinton and an aide.<\/p>\n

Last week the Drudge Report<\/span> originally linked to this Times<\/a> story from 22 November, which detailed some of the smears being levelled at <\/span>various presidential candidates.<\/p>\n

The piece began: <\/p>\n

The anonymous e-mails and letters began dropping into inboxes and through front doors this summer.<\/p>\n

One claimed that Hillary Clinton was having a lesbian affair with Huma Abedin, her beautiful aide. Another online mass-mailing cautioned of the \u201cdark secrets\u201d of Mitt Romney\u2019s Mormonism. A blogger claiming to support John McCain said that Rudy Giuliani’s wife supported the killing of \u201cinnocent puppies\u201d. Flyers appeared on cars accusing Barack Obama of being a Muslim extremist. An anonymous website said that Fred Thompson was a corrupt playboy.<\/p>\n

Welcome to South Carolina, the foulest swamp of electoral dirty tricks in America. This state\u2019s primary race has already become the sleaziest leg of the 2008 presidential campaign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
The Drudge link generated some modest traffic. So far, so straightforward. But then Drudge got hold of the paper itself.<\/p>\n

<\/a>That main photo (of Clinton walking with aide Huma Abedin) is captioned: \u201cHillary Clinton has been accused of having an affair with Huma Abedin.\u201d And, on the strength of that caption, the story made Drudge<\/span>\u2019s main page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DON\u2019T GO THERE: BRIT PAPER STARTS \u2018UGLIEST MONTH\u2019<\/a>
Sun Nov 25 2007 20:45:12 ET<\/p>\n

The TIMES of London starts \u2018The Ugliest Month\u2019 with a full page photo takeout on Hillary Clinton and her beautiful personal assistant.<\/p>\n

\u201cHillary Clinton has been accused of having an affair with Huma Abedin,\u201d reads the caption.<\/p>\n

The splash stunned British readers and angered campaign insiders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis does not even qualify as tabloid trash… it\u2019s ridiculous and reckless,\u201d a Hillary confidante explained over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Taking the whisper from the underground to the overground, the paper made no claims to knowing any truth of the relationship between Hillary and Huma…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Drudge didn\u2019t link to the original online story that puts the caption into context. So, no extra traffic for the Times<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Is this a little disingenuity by the US site? Or a case of not looking back to see that – caption aside – this is in fact the same story you already linked to?<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Still leaving politics to one side – with David Montgomery<\/a><\/span> dissing sub-editors<\/a>, what better illustration of their ability to sell stories than this?<\/p>\n

And finally, a print edition that could have driven online traffic (well, almost).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Times (of London) should have found itself generating big web traffic thanks to its print edition making the front page of Drudge. So how did it (nearly) happen? With a little help from unfounded allegations of a lesbian affair involving Hillary Clinton and an aide. Last week the Drudge Report originally linked to this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[289,47],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-online","tag-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}