This thread takes on a topic that I mentioned in several recent debates on media bias, but never got an answer to. I’ve detected a rather serious double standard in how some of our posters treat the media. When a mainstream media source makes an error, such as CBS’s report on the fake memos last fall, we get told that this one single error completely discredits CBS.
Compare that, for instance, to this thread. Matt Drudge makes up a story about John Kerry having an affair, and fabricates a bunch of evidence as proof that his story his true. When the people involved step forward and tell the truth, Drudge refuses to admit the truth and keeps insisting that he is right. And throughout this many right-wingers keep insisting that the story must be valid because Drudge has occassionally been right in the past. As we all know, this was hardly the first time that Drudge had been caught making and spreading pure fiction. But therein lies the double standard. A mainstream source that is right almost all the time and makes one mistake is viewed as discredited, even if they make retractions and corrections quickly, while a right-wing source that is wrong constantly and never retracts or apoplogizes is viewed as a valid one.
What gives?
I think your problem is that you only notice this when it happens on the right. Have you noticed how the “Bush wore a wire during the debate” meme is still floating around out there, alive and well? Or, do a search for threads started in The Pit by our most active Bushwhacker (you-know-who) for other examples.
You are overrating Drudge. His hit rate is pretty low, and I don’t know anyone with even a modicum of intelligence who takes his reports at face value.
Well that was a pretty quick debate. 
Seriously, I think Mace nailed it. There are doubtless at least some right-wingers who believe Drudge without further corroboration, but I’m unaware of any on this board, for example. Certainly I wouldn’t link to a Drudge story except in a “head’s up – we might expect further information on this from respectable sources” kind of way.
Personally, I only read him because he seems to have moles in some newsrooms that allow him to get out part of a story that another organization is preparing before the latter goes out with it. That’s essentially what the Monica Lewinsky story was – Drudge heard about the investigation Newsweek was doing and blabbed before they could publish. (As an aside, one wonders how, if at all, history might have played differently if the story began its life as a Newsweek cover story instead of a right-wing web rumor.)