Now smear this: a Web of deceit

From their beginning, American politics have been a blood sport.

It would be fine if there were some Periclean age of civility and reason to which the nostalgic might repair. But there isn’t. From the era of the Founders -- whose revolution more closely resembled a civil war than it did an insurrection in many places -- through the 19th and 20th centuries, our politics were as low and scurrilous as human malice and the campaign technology of the day permitted.

That’s why it’s both interesting and instructive that the first attempted smears of this presidential election -- both directed at Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic front-runner -- have involved the Internet. This is the first national election in which the Net will play an integral part. It already functions as a kind of tip sheet for campaign reporters and as a fix for political junkies of all stripes. During California’s recent recall election, it also was the venue in which some of the campaign’s best and most timely political journalism could be found.

The Internet with its undifferentiated amalgam of democracy, enterprise, anarchy and eccentricity also is an excellent mechanism through which to launder slander -- in that role, we might think of it as a kind of informational offshore bank, the Cayman Islands of campaigning. How the mainstream press deals with that aspect of the Net’s presence is a thing still to be worked out, which is why the handling of the two attempted hits on Kerry is an issue of some consequence.

The more serious of the two was Internet gossip Matt Drudge’s drive-by on Thursday. In an “exclusive” report, Drudge alleged that “several media outlets” were investigating allegations that Kerry had conducted a two-year affair with a young woman described as an “intern.” Drudge also alleged that one of the Massachusetts senator’s rivals, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, had told a group of reporters “off the record” that “Kerry will implode over an intern issue.”

Where was this woman? According to Drudge, “after being approached by a top news producer, the woman fled to Africa, where she remains.” Her flight was “reportedly at the prodding of Kerry,” Drudge subsequently wrote.

Note a couple of highly relevant details here: Drudge’s “report” is not on the allegations themselves, but on a purported investigation of the charges by unnamed media outlets. The reporters to whom Clark supposedly made his remark are unnamed, and not one subsequently has come forward. Still, as the first person to

circulate a report of President Clinton’s liaison with Monica Lewinsky -- another intern, get it? -- Drudge has street cred as a keyhole peeper in some quarters.

Thus, by Friday morning, Kerry had been forced to deny the story during an interview on Don Imus’ syndicated radio program. Monday, the young woman, Alexandra Polier, 27 -- a former Associated Press employee, now a freelance writer -- denounced the story as “completely false.” She is in Kenya, though hardly in hiding, since she’s visiting her fiance’s family. Her parents not only denounced the rumor, but told the Washington Post they plan to vote for Kerry.

What’s interesting is what transpired in the interim.

Today, the world of campaign journalism, like the media itself, is an interlocking maze of niches -- think pigeonholes as assembled by Rube Goldberg. In one niche is the traditional print media, where the values and tone tend to be set by the serious metropolitan newspapers. The Internet is another niche, though one so broad that it encompasses sludge like Drudge, the online editions of real papers and all sorts of indescribable things in between. Talk radio has a niche of its own these days, as does local television. Both tend to behave according to the Darwinian dictates of scant resources and remorseless ratings.

The most heartening fact to be taken from the attempted smear circulated through Drudge is that none of the country’s serious newspapers were stampeded into taking the rumor into print. Local television proved a softer target. Friday night, at least a dozen local stations -- including KABC-TV in Los Angeles -- reported the rumor, attributing it to the Drudge Report. KABC’s treatment was typical: “There’s a report on the Internet from Internet gossip columnist Matt Drudge that John Kerry, the front-runner, has had a problem with an intern in the past, perhaps an affair.”

The problem here is that a majority of Americans now report that they receive most of their news from local television. Similarly, a number of talk radio hosts -- notably Imus, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity -- reported Drudge’s allegations. None of the cable news networks nor their commentators picked up the story. In fact, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly made a point of acknowledging that while “rumors are flying around the Internet,” his highly rated program would not discuss them.

The worst performance was by the foreign press, which dived headlong and heedless into Drudge’s cesspool. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London and the Sun, Britain’s largest-circulation paper, both carried front-page accounts of the rumor in their Saturday editions. Prominent stories also appeared in newspapers in Scotland, Ireland, India and Australia. Most of these were then recycled back onto the Internet through the newspapers’ online editions.

All things considered, for a first stab at dealing with what seems likely to be a recurring problem from here on out, the serious U.S. media behaved with prudence and sobriety in this case.

It did less well with the

other attempted Kerry smear,

a doctored photograph purported to show Kerry sitting next to Jane Fonda as she spoke into a microphone at a rally against the Vietnam War.

Fonda, of course, remains red meat for a certain sort of conservative. Showing Kerry during

his days as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War as her collaborator -- fellow traveler? -- is a nifty way of undercutting the value of the candidate’s

heroic service as a decorated and thrice-wounded naval officer.

Despite the fact that the photo spread across the Web like a case of informational hives, it’s a fraud. The original photo, according to the Corbis agency, which owns it, is of Kerry sitting alone at a June 13, 1970, peace rally in Mineola, N.Y. Fonda was inserted by computer by a person as yet unknown with motives too obvious to belabor.

Before the truth emerged, however, reports in a number of papers had mentioned the doctored photo, at least in passing. As late as Tuesday some papers were treating the photo as legitimate.

The lesson for the months ahead is that, on the Internet, a photo may be worth 1,000 words -- but not until you’ve taken a second look.