It strikes me that this “Jeff Gannon” issue isn’t getting a lot of play in the media. I wonder if part of it is that it takes a staggering sort of incompetance within the media for this to have gone on for so long, given how obviously this guy was propagandizing. But more than incompetance, if we start evaluating some sort of quantitative difference between propaganda and actual news, that raises pretty critical questions about organizations like Fox News, and whether they should even be considered “news,” at all.
So maybe their hope is if they ignore “Jeff Gannon,” who is, in case you haven’t been keeping up, a White House Press Corps member – a reporter for a GOPUSA-affiliated “news” organization called “Talon News,” who used a fake name (real name JD Guckert), and is potentially affiliated with a male prostitution organization, yet still had White House Press access, and was regularly called on by Scott McClellan at briefings, it’ll all go away. If it goes away, they don’t have to actually answer questions about what is news, and what isn’t.
But “Jeff Gannon,” particularly after Armstrong Williams and that other woman being discovered to be on the White House’s payroll without disclosure… well, there’s a pattern, here. The notion of a “free and independent” media, as Bush says, is critical to the proper functioning of a democracy. Though most Americans may be too cow-eyed to bother questioning why something like this is important, it’s *critically* important that we figure out why a guy like “Jeff Gannon,” gets the access that he does.
And that’s even ignoring the hypocrisy of this guy, who writes articles defending the FMA, yet appears to be gay. Oh, and how did he have access to info about Valerie Plame, exactly?
It’s not a small issue. Not by a long shot.
I don’t even know if you bother reading comments after you’ve posted your musings, but since I like to stir you up….
I’m surprised that you didn’t mention anything about the “imbedded” media during the war. I have heard quite a few people claim that it was a very sneaky (or not sneaky at all?) way of getting the media to immediately and subconsciously side with the soldiers, and by entension, the entire DoD. I don’t actually know, but I wonder who was picked to go with the troops. Probably not reporters with a leftward bent to their reporting, I suspect.
Seems like that would be another example of the manipulation of the press by this administration. Of course, administrations manipulating the press isn’t new; but this one seems to be pushing the envelope on so many issues…
Oh, no doubt, re: the embedded media – I think it’s genuinely one of the worst things that our media has done in recent years. Basically saying, “Here’s the people that are going to keep you from getting killed. Now go out there, and be unbiased,” is ridiculous.