Matt Drudge, founder of the Drudge Report
Since 2012, The Drudge Report, operated by Matt Drudge, has linked to alleged "Russian propaganda websites" nearly 400 times, Media Matters claims.
The group, founded by former conservative journalist-turned-Clinton-lapdog David Brock, wrote a computer program to trawl links that Drudge has posted over the years to websites like RT.com, Sputnik, and TASS, all of which are believed to be controlled by the Russian government.
Posting those articles to The Drudge Report is evidence enough for Media Matters that the conservative site is "used his site as a web traffic pipeline for Russian propaganda sites."
According to Media Matters' analysis, Drudge posted 79 links to those three websites in 2015 and 122 last year. So far this year, Drudge has linked only 45 times to that trio of websites.
Despite the Media Matters' bombastic claims, its study lacks context about how The Drudge Report operates.
On Wednesday, the website had 60 articles linked to its site. Drudge typically removes and adds links throughout the day, linking to hundreds of websites on any given day.
Comment: Drudge is one of the United States most popular news websites. In fact, it regularly ranks among the top three most visited media publications online, beating the likes of Google News, CNN and the Washington Post. Readers may also recall that Drudge was listed in the Prop-or-Not list of 200 sites promoting 'Russian propaganda'. Trump tried to make friends with Russia, and we saw how the Deep State responded. Drudge links to an exceedingly small number of RT, Sputnik and TASS articles, and so he too becomes a target. The issue here is the collapsing trust in the US media as their propaganda has over-reached. They've lost credibility and are scrambling to pick up the pieces. Media power brokers seem to think that doubling-down on the propaganda will help. In reality, they're losing twice as much, twice as fast.
See: U.S. ranks near the bottom in public trust of the news media, says new study