NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd is a neo-Luddite and he doesn’t even know it. In a brief impromptu video clip, Todd said that, “there is no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge links to it.”
So forget plagiarism, intentional misinformation, news fabrication — remember the New York Times‘s Jayson Blair? — intentional shilling for a political philosophy or politician, and just plain incompetence. None, according to Todd, are as journalistically “criminal,” in the non-judicial sense, as taking a story cue from Matt Drudge.
Todd is replicating the two-hundred years old whine of the early 19th-century Luddites. Here’s a brief reminder of the movement of British textile workers led by General Ned Ludd between 1811-1816:
In the early months of 1811 the first threatening letters from General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers, were sent to employers in Nottingham Workers, upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen, began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using. In a three-week period over two hundred stocking frames were destroyed. In March, 1811, several attacks were taking place every night and the Nottingham authorities had to enroll four hundred special constables to protect the factories.
New mass production textile technology threatened the jobs of textile artisans, so they went on a destructive rampage. Here’s an account of how it began:
…Luddism began on the night of 4th November 1811, in the little village of Bulwell, some four miles north of Nottingham, when a small band of men gathered in the darkness, counted off in military style, hoisted their hammers and axes and pistols, and marched to the home of a `master weaver’ named Hollingsworth. They posted a guard, suddenly forced their way inside through shutters and doors, and proceeded to destroy a half-dozen weaving machines of a kind they found threatening to their trade. They scattered into the night, later reassembled at a designated spot, and at the sound of a pistol disbanded into the night, heading for home.
Todd’s can’t bust up the Drudge Report with a mallet, so he uses his trade tools – words. And his tool use is not all that artful in the video clip linked above.
Put yourself in Chuck’s shoes. Soon to be 38-years old, he attended but didn’t graduate from George Washington University, yet he’s an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, no doubt because of his job as Political Director for NBC News. By his lights, he’s at the top of his field.
Along comes Matt Drudge, who graduated 341st out of his high school class of 355. He worked odd jobs while he slowly, using his small apartment as his base of operations, built up a news distribution dynasty from an email mailing list of 1,000 in 1995.
Drudge is something that Chuck Todd has never been and will likely never become – an entrepreneur. Drudge’s website took nearly 8 billion hits in the last 12 months. And that’s why Chuck decided to take a hit on Matt.
Todd’s a jealous Neo-Luddite.
A Neo-Luddite is someone who believes that the use of technology has serious ethical, moral, and social ramifications. Operating under this belief, Neo-Luddites are cautious to promote early adoption of technology, and while they are not necessarily opposed to technology, they would prefer to see a more serious discussion of the role of technology in society. Some Neo-Luddites actually dislike technology, opting for a life of “voluntary simplicity,” but this is not always the case.
“Voluntary simplicity” is just what Chuck would like to see maintained, and what Matt and other are methodically deconstructing. Far better, by their lights, to simply let Chuck and his MSM colleagues, the “genuine journalists,” feed us the stories they want us to eat.
Sorry, Chuck. You’re out of luck.
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