The ITT List
Thursday Feb 24, 2005 7:54 am
Gannongate or Nothinggate?
"Is there some truth out there? Yes. Is there a lot of falsehood out there? Absolutely." --James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, on the Today Show
There's been confusion abound lately about who exactly is a journalist, and who isn't. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said last Thursday, "In this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist," after bloggers outed Washington "reporter" Jeff Gannon as a faux journalist with VIP access to daily briefings.
While listening to the press conference in realtime on the radio, and Guckert/Gannon asked his over-the-top question...
Will Gannongate (plus Armstronggate, Gallaghergate, and McManusgate) stay in the public eye, and force us to take a critical look at the relationship between the media, big business and the White House? Hendrik Hertzberg rejoins with a resounding "no" in the February 28 issue of The New Yorker that arrived yesterday in my mailbox. He writes:
There's been confusion abound lately about who exactly is a journalist, and who isn't. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said last Thursday, "In this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist," after bloggers outed Washington "reporter" Jeff Gannon as a faux journalist with VIP access to daily briefings.
While listening to the press conference in realtime on the radio, and Guckert/Gannon asked his over-the-top question...
Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work — you said you’re going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?... I almost drove the car I was steering off the road. How many more times would we have heard "Go ahead, Jeff" from the mouth of McClellan if not for the tenacity of bloggers and watchdogs like Media Matters?
Will Gannongate (plus Armstronggate, Gallaghergate, and McManusgate) stay in the public eye, and force us to take a critical look at the relationship between the media, big business and the White House? Hendrik Hertzberg rejoins with a resounding "no" in the February 28 issue of The New Yorker that arrived yesterday in my mailbox. He writes:
One might imagine that all of this had the makings of a months-long, television-friendly Washington scandal--not as important, obviously, as, say, the Iran-contra affair of the nineteen-eighties, but more so than, say, the flap about the dismissal of several employees of the White House travel office in 1993. One would probably be wrong. The non-Fox cable news outlets began to pick up on it last week; MSNBC even assayed a special logo, "Gannongate." A better name for it, though, would be "Nothinggate, " because nothing is what is likely to come of it. What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years--real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment--have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won't be because the scandals aren't there. It'll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key.
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200502230003
Local newspapers across U.S. devoted editorials to Gannongate
As of February 22, none of the five largest U.S. newspapers* (USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post) had devoted an editorial on any aspect of the recent revelation that former Talon News Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon (aka James D. Guckert) was permitted to attend White House press briefings under an alias and despite having no credentials as a journalist. By contrast, numerous smaller newspapers—ranging in size from the Houston Chronicle and Minneapolis Star-Tribune to several college newspapers—have examined the issue in editorials.
There is a lot of commentaries posted on http://mediamatters.org/comments/latest/200502230003
Mainstream media is doing its best to ignore this monster of a scandal. Sure is nice to know that they are on the job.
I guess you thought those were Christmas BALLS hanging in the White House.
“Oh look…the dogs are playing with Howard Kurtz’s nuts…how cute!”
“Honey…watch me sink Shawn’s Hannity’s left testicle in the side pocket!”
Slicky tricky right wingers…so cool.
News/Marketing/Opinion management. Not a new, but a refined concept. Embedded indeed.
Town Hall meetings straight from Steppford. Idiot applauders, smilers, nodders, flag wavers…a backdrop of chubby white faces totally in agreement.
These Bush bamboozlers might as well have paid reporters, since they wrote the book on everything being for sale.
Is it sad that the terms free press and journalist are subject to looking under the skirt to see what’s there? Sure it is. Definitly.
Is it reality. Yes.
The major problem with this whole bunch of big money liars is the lack of watch dogs to watch them all. Overwhelming, in fact.
My only comment is “Can you imagine if this had happened during Bill Clinton’s administration???”
I have absolutely no doubt that the GOP would use an incident like this to bring impeachment charges against Clinton. After all, they did over consensual sex with an adult female!!!
Why should the media talk about Gannon when they can talk about Martha? My local NBC
TV channel avoided talking about Stewart for 10 full minutes the other night before they finally gave in and covered her story. All the other channels had opened with it.
WHO F’ing cares? Viewers really don’t care. The lazy media is making it seem like MS’s life is worth talking about because they have encamped well-paid reporters outside her prison and have to get some news to justify the expense.
And how about Jacko? WHO F’ing cares what happens day to day in his trial? Tell us when the jury makes its decision and let’s get around to more important stuff like why in our thirst for cheap Saudi oil we’re sucking on Lady Macbeth’s teat.
As a former journalist, I understand the ease of following up press releases compared to the agony of hunting down new stuff about people who don’t want to talk. But these TV stations have millions of dollars to work with. Certainly they can pay a few top editors to actually do some story assigning. And fire the parasitic Katie Courics and Diane Sawyers who opiate the people before feeding on them.
A story? Let’s call a terrorist who hates our presence in his land enough to kill himself over it. The motto for this past election should have been: It’s the suicides, stupid.
It’s so quiet…I’m hearing less and less on this every day…nothinggate. Unbelieveable. They really can get away with any/everything, can’t they? What is it going to take?
And good Americans everywhere continue to wave their flags, trust the media, and drink the kool-aid.
Actually, what all the previous scandals had in common was that the first reaction of the adminstration in power was to deny that there was a problem or that they had any connection to it. Bush seems to have learned the lesson that a scandal denied is a scandal prolonged.
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