Drudge Report Analysis on Who Drives Traffic For News

So the drudge report just released some interesting results talking about who is in fact driving eyeballs to news sites based on some of the data they were seeing.  

I am confused by these results though....

Specifically I am confused by the results for twitter.  Here is why....

Implicitly most of twitters traffic is coming through and from 3rd party apps and things like tweetdeck.   Was this analysis aware of that and did they understand how each of those apps reports HTTP_REFERRER?    I am confused by the report as it does not indicate that.

I am not even sure if the writer is asking the right question.   I mean in the last 9 days a twitter story broke and through it's inherently social platform it got mass distributed in a way that I do not think we have ever seen before causing mass, local, and social media impact as well as extreme word of mouth impact.

The question the writer asked was how much inbound traffic was driven in a direct attribution model to the site from another site.    Not where the story starts, receives velocity or critical mass.   Oy.... my digital brethren when will we realize the world is bigger than that which you achieve through direct attribution tactics on.    We take measures that are irresponsible to show and use them to justify a position without examining whether the methodology is sound.

And we wonder why marketers are confused and investment is held back.