Columbine and the Drudge Report

Immediately following the shootings the Drudge Report gained a lot of media attention due to the sensational (though often wrong) things he posted to the internet. As this occurred when the 'net was still very new, reporters and news writers didn't understand yet that something isn't necessarily true just because it's in print on the Web so they blindly believed the nonsense the Drudge Report (and other websites) were spewing till the truth was made known. These days the media is far more careful about what internet sources they rely on for facts. It was silliness like this, though, that had to rock the news world before they realized fact-checking is something that has to be done online as well as off-.

Anyway, here's what ABCNews Online had to say on the matter:

Helping spread [the rumors] are Internet gossipmongers like Matt Drudge, who updated his Web site less than three hours after the shooting with the blaring headline: “EXCLUSIVE: ‘TRENCHCOAT MAFIA’ PLACED WARNING OF COMING SCHOOL MASSACRE ON AOL!”
Asked Tuesday night what he did to confirm that the member profile had in fact been posted before the shootings, Drudge said at first: "Nothing. I just pulled it off AOL with my own eyes. … I think it’s completely valid."

Later Drudge said he had called AOL’s customer-support phone number but the person he was referred to wouldn’t give him the identity of the AOL member who posted the purported warnings.

AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said: "We have no knowledge at this point that the people involved in the shootings actually posted any advance warning on AOL. It’s something we’ll continue to monitor."

You can see copy of the 'warning' here, as it looked in 1999 when I saved it. Below you can find copies of some of the erroneous and/or inflammatory things the Drudge Report posted that added to the confusion and rumor-mongering that haunts the Columbine tragedy to this day. I've added my own comments here and there in italics.

[According to this edition of the Drudge Report, death education classes were taught at Columbine High in the early 90's.]

APRIL 24

DEATH EDUCATION?

..one student even planned to kill herself after attending one of the classes, ABC NEWS reported in a 20/20 profile back in 1991...

"We talked about what we wanted to look like in our casket," student Tara Becker told ABC in an interview.

"Tara Becker believes she was seduced into a suicide attempt by her Death Ed class."

Tara was a junior at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, reported Tom Jarriel.

A transcript of the stunning ABC NEWS broadcast was obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.

Anchor Hugh Downs introduced the segment: "Your child could be in a class that only a few years ago might have been unthinkable- death education. These classes are supposed to prepare young people for coping with death and while most schools make it part of a health class, some actually make it an entire course."

Becker told the news magazine: "I had thought about [suicide] as a possible option for a lot of years, but I never would have gone through with it, never, because I wasn't brave enough. The things that we learned in the class taught us how to be brave enough to face death."

Jarriel summarized: "Graphically introducing death to impressionable young minds is at the core of the controversy over death education in our public schools. Will students walk away from here with clearer understanding of death or with nightmarish memories that might haunt them for life and perhaps, inadvertently, suggest death as an answer to adolescent problems?"

[I searched ABC's archives, but they only went back to 1998 as ABC was still new on the web at the time. ]

APRIL 22

GOTH BACKLASH

"I'm being looked at like I'm a monster," one high school student in Kansas City, tears welled in her eyes, tells Friday's KANSAS CITY STAR. "We get it all the time anyway. Now we're getting it to the nth degree."

A sophomore at Oak Park High School plans to distribute fliers at school on Friday encouraging classmates to be tolerant, reports the papers.

"I don't want them to think every person who wears black is this psycho. These boys had problems whether they dressed in ABERCROMBIE & FITCH or NINE INCH NAILS T-shirts and trench coats."

KMFDM SLAM...

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing rampage at Columbine High School the same day that their favorite band KMFDM released a new album -- an album titled ADIOS.

The band, which broke up in January and released its last album, ADIOS, on Tuesday, had become an obsession to the shooters, one student who knew the pair told the DRUDGE REPORT.

Harris maintained a Web page in which he quoted lyrics of KMFDM. He would often wear a KMFDM ballcap.

[Adios was released on April 20, 1999, after the band (temporarily) broke up on January 22, 1999. However there's never been any evidence that either shooter knew that would be the release date.]

APRIL 21st

THE GAY ISSUE

Jocks at Columbine High would pick on the school's Trenchcoat Mafia, calling members "gay", "freaks" and "homos", the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER and Grand Junction's DAILY SENTINEL are reporting in Thursday editions.

"They were ones you'd make fun of," Mike Smith, 18, a senior and a point guard on the school's state championship basketball team, tells the INQUIRER*.

Smith says that "he and the other jocks would pick on the mafia members, egging them on with gibes of 'gay,' or 'inbreed.'"

The tensions between the jocks and the trenchcoats came to a head at the end of the last school year.

For several weeks, Smith tells the paper, the two groups fought almost daily after school. "It was like, 'OK, we'll meet you here and we'll meet you there and get it all over with.'"

He said school officials knew about the fights but did little to stop them.

At the time in the past, he had shrugged off the disputes. But Wednesday, he felt guilty, reports the paper's Richard Jones and Gwen Florio in Littleton.

"Sometimes," he added, gesturing at the school over his shoulder, "I think it's because of me."

Jon Vandermark, a 16-year-old sophomore, tells Thursday's DAILY SENTINEL [in Grand Junction, Colo.] that members of the Trenchcoat Mafia said they were bi-sexual.

"Boys would hold hands in the halls sometimes," Vandermark tells the paper. "They were called freaks, homos and everything in-between."

Junior Nicole Shieve watched as the two, and others in the group, kept getting picked on during school.

[It has since been proven that the TCM weren't friends of the shooters at all. While they shared some mutual friends, most of the folks who made up the Trenchcoat Mafia had already graduated from Columbine before 1999 and didn't hang out with either Eric or Dylan. Who the people above were actually talking about is speculative; it's possible that they may have assumed that all teens dressed in trenchcoats were part of the same group. It's also possible that some "witnesses" - like many self-proclaimed Navy SEALs following the death of bin Laden - might have just been telling stories to get face time on the news. It's doubtful, though, that a 16 year old at Columbine in 1999 ever met or saw any of the real TCM members.

* http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Apr/22/front_page/SUSP22.htm is where the article in question originally appeared. It is no longer online but you can see some more from it in Salon.com's coverage of the rumor that wouldn't go away.]

[The following title summarizes every rumor and false "fact" that flooded the news back in 1999. This is seriously what passed for 'credible reporting' back then. Fortunately for us all, reporters tend to check their sources a lot better these days, instead of taking the word of every excited kid who contacts them.]

APRIL 20th

GAY, JOCK-HATING, CONFEDERATE FLAG-WEARING, GOTH ROCK & MARILYN MANSON LOVING, WHITE SUPREMACIST, FINGERNAIL POLISH WEARING, HITLER BIRTHDAY CELEBRATING OUTCASTS

Everywhere you looked Tuesday night -- a different explanation.

Less than 90 minutes into the tragedy, students claiming to be from the high school could be found on local TV and radio stations [which went national] claiming the gang was gay and angry at jocks.

One caller aired on CNN said the killers are known for wearing fingernail polish.

But the storyline appeared to change hours later with reports from students that the group was filled with white supremacists into Nostradamus and Doomsday.

The ASSOCIATED PRESS claimed late Tuesday night that the followers were actually into shock rocker Marilyn Manson.

Gay Marilyn Manson fans who are white supremacists that wear fingernail polish?

The LOS ANGELES TIMES printed details from a suspect's AOL profile listing his Personal Quote as "Kill em AALLLL!!!!"

This report early on Tuesday highlighted an apparent warning found on another AOL profile: "Preparin' for the big april 20!! You'll all be sorry that day!"

MSNBC showed what claimed to be a trenchcoat website that was filled with Goth details and horror.

But an older member of the Trenchcoat Mafia and friend of the gunmen tells Wednesday's DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS that the killers weren't Goths. They wore trenchcoats because they liked them.

The paper also reports that Eric Harris, one of the dead gunmen, belonged to a web group that engaged in vampire games and lore.

The WASHINGTON POST reports on Wednesday that the Trenchcoat Mafia members wore confederate flag patches -- and threw a twisted celebration on Hitler's birthday.

It became increasingly clear going into Day Two of the Columbine High massacre that news consumers could fill in their own blanks...