Liberation News Service

Complicity of the Corporatist News Media (“Gannon,” etc.)
Mark Crispin Miller Examines Mainstream Media's Blind Eye Towards the Gannongate Sex Scandal
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Clinton's sex life was fair game.... Although it wasn't all that interesting, let's face it--it was a consensual affair with Monica.... It made Mike Isikoff's career, gave Maureen Dowd innumerable columns, and pushed the likes of Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg into prominence. Now Bush's White House is embroiled in a sex scandal that is both more sordid and more serious.... This involves not just a huge security lapse, but what appears to be yet one more case of the Bush White House illegally deploying propaganda tactics through the institutions of the Fourth Estate.
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Propaganda expert and communications professor Mark Crispin Miller has always paid close attention to the symbiosis between the Bush administration and the mainstream press. That's why BuzzFlash decided we needed his highly educated take on the latest turn of the screw (so to speak) in the White House press room. In his writings, such as Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order and The Bush Dyslexicon, he has helped us understand the relentless campaign to control the media and suppress any but Bush-friendly messages and images. His one-man performances and DVD of "A Patriot Act," a BuzzFlash premium, have entertained and educated, as well. Without further ado, here is Miller's take on why Gannongate happened, and why mainstream media doesn't want to know.
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BuzzFlash: Why is the so-called "Eastern Liberal Press" ignoring the Gannon/Guckert affair or having White House shills like Howard Kurtz covering it in the Style Section? Didn't the Post and New York Times gobble up Matt Drudge's semen-stained leaks from Ken Starr when it concerned a Democratic President? In the post 9/11 world, how could the mainstream media ignore the security lapse here?

Mark Crispin Miller: The media's bizarre avoidance of this very juicy story makes a few things very clear--or I should say, very clear again. First of all, it's further proof that there is no "liberal bias" in the US corporate press--none whatsoever. It also reconfirms the fact that this media system is not simply "sensationalistic," and therefore apt to print whatever lurid stories its employees can dig up. There is a tabloid element, of course, but it works according to a double standard that is more ideological than commercial. Simply put, the US media reports sex scandals only when they seem to tar "the left," i.e., the Democratic party. As long as they involve the Democrats, the press is clearly willing to report such scandals even when they're fabricated. On the other hand, the press goes deaf and blind to "moral" scandals that involve Republicans, no matter how egregious and well-documented.

So Clinton's sex life was fair game. Not only did the press go ape-shit over his affair with Monica, but US journalists were often not reluctant to run rumors, or at least allow the rightist rumor mongers to rave on uncontradicted. Clinton's sex life made careers in journalism, or what passes for it nowadays. Although it wasn't all that interesting, let's face it--it was a consensual affair with Monica, and he was strikingly inhibited throughout--it took up hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks of air time and print coverage. It made Mike Isikoff's career, gave Maureen Dowd innumerable columns, and pushed the likes of Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg into prominence.

Now Bush's White House is embroiled in a sex scandal that is both more sordid and more serious than anything involving Clinton's infamous libido. This involves not just a huge security lapse, but what appears to be yet one more case of the Bush White House illegally deploying propaganda tactics through the institutions of the Fourth Estate.
Moreover, Gannon/Guckert seems to have been given classified information. He evidently knew of "shock and awe" before it was announced, for instance. The story's busting out all over, and getting uglier and weirder by the day--but not on the networks, not on cable, and, in print, primarily in opinion pieces. If this had happened in a Democratic White House, there would be no escaping it, and the rightists would be shrieking that the President of the United States had taught our precious children all about gay sex for hire. (According to the right, remember, it was Clinton--not his enemies, and not the press-- who went public with the news about those blow jobs.)

It's typical. There was a big sex scandal back in 1989, reported by, of all organs, the Washington Times, which broke the story of a male prostitution ring with lots of clients in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and a midnight tour of the White House by six revelers, two of them male prostitutes. Did anybody ever hear of that again?
The same silence persists today; and what's crazier about it now, of course, is that this bunch purports to be real big on "moral values." In other words, they--unlike Clinton--just don't do that stuff. These are the ones imposing giant fines on radio stations for "indecent" speech, and the ones pushing abstinence-only sex education, and--above all--persecuting gays in every way available. And yet their various illicit recreations get no press outside of cyberspace.

So William Bennett's gambling got a lot of press, but his employment of Mistress Lee was not reported anywhere. Gary Condit's affair with--and alleged murder of--Chandra Levy was The Story You Could Not Escape for weeks right up to 9/11, even though there was no evidence that he had harmed her. On the other hand, Laurie Klausutis, an intern in Joe Scarborough's office, was allegedly murdered, right in his office, but it was all, some would contend, hushed up completely (and yet Scarborough sometimes whines about it anyway). We heard a lot about Woody Allen's situation--Newt Gingrich even crowed that it was typical "liberal" behavior--but when it turned out that the president of Hillsdale College, a far-right institution, had been boffing his own daughter-in-law, who went and blew her brains out in despair, that icky item had no legs. In fact, it had no torso, and no head. It simply wasn't, because the press will not go there when it involved the right.

BuzzFlash: Many Democrats are afraid to touch the Gannon/Guckert affair because he's gay, and they feel guilty about being critical of gays. But three of the main sites that are leading the story are run by openly gay men who find homophobe gays like Gannon/Guckert abhorrent. In fact, the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, has many gays in senior positions including Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee. Drudge himself is gay. Some of the most rabid homophobe GOP congressmen have been outed as gay. What is this gay GOP homophobe thing all about when there is obviously a gay bunny patch going on at the highest level of the Republican Party?

Mark Crispin Miller: Those liberals who refuse to speak out on this issue just don't get it. They think they're being politically correct concerning gays, when all they're really doing is covering for the sickest homophobes. It was much the same thing with those Democrats who wouldn't make an issue of Bill Frist and his family making major profits off abortion. The Frists own a chain of hospitals that do abortions. That's astonishing hypocrisy, and ought to have been named as such, but it was not, because of Democratic shyness about saying anything that might sound anti-choice.
But the sanctity of reproductive rights was not the issue there. The issue was the insincerity and greed of those Republicans who moralize about abortion even as they make a big fat buck from it. This fact would have appalled some on the right, alienating them from Frist & Co. Other, less scrupulous rightists would have been hard-pressed to defend Frist's practices, and that would have enabled a rhetorical victory in the eyes of the majority. That's how you play to win. And it would ultimately have been much better for the policy of reproductive freedom, as it would have weakened some of the leading players in the anti-choice propaganda war.

It's much the same with this issue. The point of going after Gannon/Guckert for his day job--and outing all his rightist clients--is not an anti-gay move. Rather, it's a way to demonstrate the bad faith of the homophobes, and, still more important, the psychological impossibility of their position. To note that this whole gay-baiting movement is itself the work of closet cases is to illuminate the pathological dimension of that movement.

BuzzFlash: BuzzFlash's most basic premise is that the modern Republican Party is built upon a foundation of corrupt hypocrisy and ineptitude. How does the Gannon/Guckert affair represent that?

Mark Crispin Miller: Inept and hypocritical they are indeed, but what this scandal tells us is way more profound. As I've argued both in Cruel and Unusual and "A Patriot Act," there's a big difference between hypocrisy and projectivity. Hypocrisy means "dissimulation" pure and simple. A hypocrite does one thing privately while playing a very different role in public. Insofar as he's capable of happiness, he's happy just to live such a divided life. What he does not need is to have some demon-figure(s) onto whom he can relentlessly project those aspects of himself that he unconsciously detests. This is the animus that drives the Bushevik movement--more than greed, more than oil, more than imperialism. The movement is, ultimately, pathological. Which explains its compulsive hatefulness. Every time the Bushevik vents his spleen against "the liberals," he's actually referring to himself. "The liberals," he insists, are lying, bitter diehards, who would do anything to stay in power; they steal elections; they are "a coalition of the wild-eyed"; and on it goes forever. If the movement weren't relentlessly projective, it would just disappear. They have to stay on the attack against the demon, which they can never finally kill, because that demon is inside them.

So this episode is not anomalous. Guckert/Gannon is no oddity, but just another fine example of projective nastiness. He's by no means the only gay homophobe in this movement, which appears to be the work primarily of closet cases. There are others who have not been outed, but should be. The rest of us should be taking this quite seriously, not just because it might enable a political advantage, but because it cuts right to the heart of what this Christo-fascist movement's all about.

BuzzFlash: If the Gannon/Guckert affair--which touches upon so many of the threats that the Bush White House poses to America and its utter moral corruption--doesn't force the mainstream press to forsake corporate profit concerns and fear of getting Karl Rove upset, what would?

Mark Crispin Miller: That's the question we keep asking ourselves, isn't it? It assumes that they can get fed up, that there will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. That may not be the proper way to think about it. They may be so corrupt and so deluded that they simply cannot see what's right before their eyes. In which case we will have to find some way to force the story out. In any case, it's up to us, the people, to take care of this mess, isn't it? The Framers saw the press as crucial to American democracy, but it is still the people who make all the difference ultimately. What we may need to do is reconceive "the press" so that it includes the blogosphere, books, independent documentaries. Until we start to manage thorough media reform, we're on our own.

Let me add, though, that the mainstream press will be that much likelier to come around if/when they can no longer fail to see the Busheviks' disastrous impact on the economy. That's the one line that no US regime can cross for long. Remember Pat Buchanan? The press winked at his fascism until he started going populist on "free trade." It was only then that his Falangist world-view, his racism and antisemitism, started getting any ink.

BuzzFlash: What would the mainstream media have done if Clinton had planted a boy toy shill in the White House press corps?

Mark Crispin Miller: Question answers itself.
BuzzFlash: Where are Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and others? How come they are not out denouncing the sin of Satan in the White House?

Mark Crispin Miller: I suspect that there are factions on the Christian right that are appalled, although they wouldn't say it in public, as they're too well-disciplined to air their rifts that way. After all, their heroes in the world of politics aren't Jesus and St. Paul, remember, but Lenin and Trotsky. As David Brock has pointed out, the Weyrichs and Norquists are big fans of the Bolsheviks.

Despite their public silence, some of those rightists don't approve of anyone who's gay, and would do anything they could to purge gays from the government, and execute the rest of them (by stoning, preferably). This may shed some light on Doug Wead's strange decision to go public with those tapes of Bush before the coup. The true believers have to be disgusted, or at least uneasy, at the fact that Bush is soft on gays (or worse). These folks aren't inclined to compromise their theocratic principles. The top guys, like Falwell and Ralph Reed, are probably too keen on their own power to tolerate a schismatic or rebellious move, but others surely are more purist. As it's a revolutionary movement like any other, it tends to fragmentation.

BuzzFlash: Now, Rove and company are advising Gannon/Guckert to claim that he has been saved by Christianity. Isn't that "get out of jail" card becoming a bit tired?

Mark Crispin Miller: Rove's cynicism is unbounded. That doesn't mean that it will work. We tend by now to see Rove as all-powerful, invulnerable, which is exactly how he wants us all to see him. But he's fallible, and getting more so as he grows more power-crazed. He's capable of desperation measures, and this may well be one of them.

BuzzFlash: The Republicans are against quotas and affirmative action, but accuse the Democrats of discriminating when they don't support a Clarence "Stepan Fetchit" Thomas or Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales. Now, they are making an Internet gay hustler into a victim. How do they get away with their brazen immorality and hypocrisy?

Mark Crispin Miller: Again, it's not hypocrisy. It's worse. When they assail the Democrats for bigotry, some of them at least are capable of half-believing it. The propagandist who can vent straight from the heart is always more effective, more convincing, than the one who has to fake it. Orwell's notion of "doublethink" is pertinent here. The rightists have the knack for being cynical manipulators and passionate fanatics at the same time. So they can muster something like genuine outrage that the Democrats are bigoted, etc.

Also, they are themselves more deeply into victimology than any liberals. They actually do see themselves as persecuted. So did Hitler.

BuzzFlash: Is it possible that, if the truth about the gay randiness in the modern Republican homophobe party got out to the red state believers, there might be a pitchfork rebellion against Rove, Bush and their homophobe hypocrites?

Mark Crispin Miller: Yes.

BuzzFlash: How can pro-democracy Americans keep from banging their heads against the wall when they look at television news or the front page of their newspaper and see this betrayal of America ignored or belittled as a piffle, as Wolf Blitzer and Howard Kurtz have done? When the mainstream press has covered it, they have only done so, with few exceptions, to give Rove and company the opportunity to make Gannon/Guckert into someone who is suffering the barbs of an out of control blog attack.

Mark Crispin Miller: It's infuriating and disorienting. Now we know how reasonable people feel, and have felt, in closed societies. You see one thing with your own eyes, and see something wholly different in the press. It can drive you nuts--which is, of course, the way you feel, having that surreal experience day after day. The trick is not to let it throw you, but to channel all that righteous indignation into trying to tell the truth in every way you can.
BuzzFlash: Thanks for your valuable analysis on this important piece of the Bush propaganda story.
Mark Crispin Miller: You're welcome.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
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Resources
Mark Crispin Miller's "A Patriot Act" (DVD)
http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/04/10/pre04058.html
NYU's Mark Crispin Miller biography
http://education.nyu.edu/education/...
http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/
Talking with Mark Crispin Miller, Author of Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order, A BuzzFlash Interview, July 23, 2004
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/07/int04037.html
Mark Crispin Miller, Author of "The Bush Dyslexicon," Talks With BuzzFlash.Com About the Man Leading Us Toward Armageddon and Miller's One Man Show in NYC, A BuzzFlash Interview, February 23, 2003
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/02/23_Miller.html
Mark Crispin Miller, A BuzzFlash Interview, July 19, 2002
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/2002/07/19_Mark_Crispin_Miller.html

Wanted: An Investigative Reporter to Break Open the Explosive Story of a Mainstream Press that Betrays America
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
The White House apologist mainstream press corps is now flagellating the Internet blogs and news services, such as BuzzFlash, claiming that writers on the net are fast with the truth.
What the reality is is this: sites like BuzzFlash.com are fast, fast in telling the truth. The New York Times and Washington Post are so interested in protecting the status quo that they are now the tail end of breaking White House scandal stories, rather than breaking them. They can lay claim to be 12th and 13th to publish hot news stories, two weeks after they've hit the Internet.
You've got White House protectors like Howard Kurtz, who is laughably called a media reporter for the Post. If Kurtz saw Karl Rove drop Howard Dean's body over the White House fence, he'd call his good buddy, Scottie McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, and ask him what happened.
Scottie, 'ol chap, would tell Howard that it was only Karl tossing out an old rug. Kurtz would tell him, "good to go," and the story next day in the style section of the Post would be, "I called Scottie McClellan and he assured me that Karl Rove was doing some late evening cleaning of his office and decided to throw out an old rug himself. That's all it amounts to." Oh, yeah, and on page A16 of the Post, there would be a small article, below an ad for Filene's Bargain Basement, "DNC Chair Howard Dean Reported Missing."
The layer of editors at the Post only ensures that no story will end up in the news section that will bring down Rove's wrath. That's the definition of "truth" in contemporary Washington journalism. The recent Wolf Blitzer-Howard Kurtz CNN program blowing off of the Gannon/Guckert scandal as a "piffle" was a mindboggling, specious, unprofessional effort to come to the defense of the indefensible: a White House that manipulates the press like marionettes.
Besides which, during the Clinton impeachment, the mainstream press gravitated to every salacious detail leaked by Matt Drudge (illegally secreted to him by Ken Starr's staff), like flies to excrement -- and nary a complaint was heard. The New York Times and Washington Post were among the lead flies circling the Drudge dung.
As we noted when we recently named Howard Kurtz our BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week:
Following the Gannon story, anyone with half a brain cell realizes that Kurtz's comments are simply damage control bullet points from or for the White House. The blogging world did what the lackey mainstream press will no longer do, expose a story that is at the epicenter of the deceit and propaganda media campaign central to how the Bush Cartel continues to control America. The Gannon story touches upon everything from manufactured news to manufactured "reporters" to the Valerie Plame affair to websites that have a connection to the White House, but appear independent, to a Bush Cartel hypocrisy about gays, to payola, to scripted Bush news conferences, to who knows what. This is a BIG media story that should be on the cover of the New York Times and Post.
But it isn't, is it? The real investigative news story that needs to happen is not in the mainstream press; it is about the mainstream press.
It has been a mindboggling Orwellian week when a Capitol Hill/White House Press Corps that couldn't stop salivating 24/7 over a blow job dismisses a non-journalist getting access to CIA documents and questioning the President of the United States, while he moonlights as a gay military hooker, dismisses the story as nothing, even as untold numbers of questions are raised about the White House credentialing process, with enormous implications for potential lapses in national security.
Hey, Scott McClellan admitted that he knew Gannon was operating under a pseudonym, but that didn't seem to disturb him, until he later qualified his story. In fact, there is so much damage control going on at the White House now, you would think that the White House Press Corps would be popping out with revelations of improprieties; that is, if they were doing their jobs. But that would be too much to ask. No one wants to rock the boat there, even when a mega-scandal is sitting right next to them.
Okay, so let's get Republican here. It's not the seedy sex and whether or not Gannon/Guckert was "servicing" anybody at the White House; it's the lying. But the White House Press Corps long ago stopped caring about Bush White House duplicity. Lying is the coin of the realm at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Gannon/Guckert wasn't the only one to transmit White House press releases without any serious questioning of their veracity.
There are a thousand and one questions that can and should be raised about the White House stonewalling and lies about the Gannon/Guckert affair. And the only reason you will see them on the net is because it can get a reporter fired to bring them up fairly in the mainstream press (with the exception of columnists).
It's got nothing to do with credentials. You can report a Pentagon news release, get two people in the Pentagon to say it's true, and still be writing up a lie. It's who you ask, what you ask, and how vigorously you pursue the story. Most mainstream reporters can telephone in their stories nowadays after getting news releases from the Bush Administration.
Sure, there are some decent, honest journalists chafing at the restrictions placed upon them not to expose the truth about the White House chronic lying and media manipulation. And there are some swell columnists in the New York Times and Washington Post, but the accomplices to the White House are the news editors. Everyday they choose what is considered news and what is not considered news. It is a highly subjective process, subject to White House pressure and influence.
Recently, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wouldn't even tell his own ombudsman why the controversial Judith Miller went on television to discuss how the infamous source of many of her misleading pre-Iraq leaks, Chalabi, was now on the insider's list of the Bush Cartel again. You see, Miller revealed this on cable TV, in the newspaper's name, several days before it appeared in the NYT under another byline. And Miller was one of the people whose pre-Iraq war reporting the NYT apologized for. But nothing's changed.
Which brings us to the Valerie Plame, Jeff Gannon/Guckert, Judith Miller, Bob Novak, and Patrick Fitzgerald axis of "six degrees of separation." Just a few of the mainstream press dots that connect one to the other. You see, Gannon/Guckert tried to nail Joe Wilson by saying that he, Gannon/Guckert, was shown a classified CIA document (but Kurtz, Blitzer and the like seem to care little about such violations of national security). And Miller, ostensibly, faces going to jail for not revealing her knowledge about the Plame leak, while Novak blissfully continues to get paid to shill for the Republicans and the White House in particular, even though he was the one who outed Plame.
So Bill Keller is getting all indignant that Miller might go to jail and is making the Plame matter an issue of the right of a reporter to maintain confidential sources. But, here is where it gets interesting. Just the other day, a Federal judicial panel including David Sentelle (who exonerated Ollie North, appointed Ken Starr, approved secret activities by the FBI, and countless other decisions for the GOP), approved sending Miller to jail if she didn't talk.
Well, why would a right wing lackey like Sentelle side with the Bush administration on forcing a reporter (Judith Miller) who is a propaganda conduit for them to go to jail? (Miller wrote stories without naming sources that Cheney then used to create "factoids" to justify the Iraq War.)
Here's why. Because the purpose of the so-called Fitzgerald "Plame Investigation" is not to charge anyone at the White House; it is to find a reason NOT to charge anyone at the White House. If the U.S. Attorney can prove that there was general knowledge among a certain group of reporters in D.C. that Plame was a CIA operative, then no crime was committed. And that is where, in the end, trust us, the go-to-girl for the White House, Judy Miller, will assist them. Alberto Gonzales brought the two key lawyers who were representing Bush in the Plame case to the Justice Department. So are you getting the picture now?
And what better way to bollix up an investigation than not to subpoena Novak, and, instead, subpoena secondary reporters to the investigation and get the media to denounce the threats being placed on their reporters? Ingenious.
Are you starting to connect the dots? The mainstream press should be connecting the dots, except for the fact that they are the dots.
Bill Keller recently bemoaned to the New Yorker that Karl Rove had berated him for not being fair to Bush. We were laughing so hard when we read that, we fell off our barstool. The New York Times political coverage (as distinct from its editorial page) is so innocuous and unwilling to connect the dots of the Bush administration, it would be useless without all of its supplementary sections, such as the editorial section and book review. It's Karl Rove's dream "liberal paper," because its news section is not liberal politically in the least in terms of news judgment.
It's had a little run on torture stories, and printed an Iraq munitions theft piece before the election because it was going to come out anyway, but it accepts the administration as if it is an honest one. If the role of journalism is to challenge authority by seeking out the truth behind the official statements, the New York Times fails miserably, with a few exceptions here and there. It in no way conveys the radicalism of the people in the White House, nor runs longer investigative pieces on their chronic deceptions and dishonesty. It pretty much accepts their news handouts at face value.
Which returns us to Gannon/Guckert. Here was a shill for the White House literally sitting amongst the mainstream reporters. A faux reporter by day and gay prostitute for Marines by night. A man who passed White House security using a pseudonym. A man the White House Press Secretary says that he was aware was not using his real name. A man who had access to at least one confidential CIA memorandum. And that's only the beginning of the unfolding story. The latest is that Dana Milbank, one of the reporters at the Post, says he believes Gannon/Guckert had a "hard pass" (no pun intended), not a day pass, as Scott McClellan has assured everyone. Gannon/Guckert couldn't even get accredited by the Capitol Hill Press Corps, but he got to ask questions of the President of the United States, as Helen Thomas was banished to a back seat.
Any journalism school graduate, untainted by the corruption of a mainstream press corps that is co-opted by the White House, would have pursued the Gannon/Guckert story as did the bloggers and BuzzFlash.
When you are young and well-trained in a good journalism school, your goal is the pursuit of the truth. Your concern is your professional ethics and credibility. Your loyalty is to your country.
That's before you get corrupted.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/02/edi05029.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/25/gannon_coverage/print.html

See no Gannon, hear no Gannon, speak no Gannon
Why has the mainstream media ignored the White House media access scandal?
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By Eric Boehlert

Feb. 25, 2005 | On Feb. 17, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams introduced a report on controversial White House correspondent James Guckert by informing viewers that the saga was "the talk of Washington." Nine days later the mysterious tale of an amateur, partisan journalist who slipped into the White House under false pretenses remains the buzz of the Beltway. Yet most mainstream reporters have opted not to cover the story. Two of the television networks, as well as scores of major metropolitan newspapers around the country, have completely ignored it.
"It's stunning to me that there are questions about the independent press being undermined and the mainstream press doesn't seem that interested in it," says Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary during President Clinton's second term. "People in the mainstream press have shrugged their shoulders and said, 'It's a whole lot of nothing.'"
"It's difficult to explain," adds John Aravosis, who publishes Americablog.com, which has been instrumental in breaking news on "Gannongate." "What more do we need for this story to be reported on seriously? It's everything Washington loves in a story. But the response is literally, 'Ew, we can't touch this.'" (The story itself refuses to die. On Thursday, while Guckert's former employer Talon News was going dark, Guckert relaunched his Web site, complete with a request for donations to "fight back against the well funded attack machine on the Left.")
Ordinarily, revelations that a former male prostitute, using an alias (Jeff Gannon) and working for a phony news organization, was ushered into the White House -- without undergoing a full-blown security background check -- in order to pose softball questions to administration officials would qualify as news by any recent Beltway standard. Yet as of Thursday, ABC News, which produces "Good Morning America," "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings," "Nightline," "This Week," "20/20" and "Primetime Live," has not reported one word about the three-week-running scandal. Neither has CBS News ("The Early Show," "The CBS Evening News," "60 Minutes," "60 Minutes Wednesday" and "Face the Nation"). NBC and its entire family of morning, evening and weekend news programs have addressed the story only three times. Asked about the lack of coverage, a spokesperson for ABC did not return calls seeking comment, while a CBS spokeswoman said executives were unavailable to discuss the network's coverage.
Perhaps nobody is surprised that Republican-friendly Fox News has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid covering the Guckert story and the embarrassing questions it raises for the Bush White House. Since the story began to take shape earlier this month, Fox News has filled more than 500 hours of programming. During that span the name "Jeff Gannon" has been uttered just five times on the air, according to a search of the LexisNexis electronic database of television news transcripts. And at no point have the facts surrounding the story been explained to Fox's viewers. (Dependable Republican ally Matt Drudge, who in the past has gleefully trumpeted media scandals, has also been allergic to Gannongate, posting just one link to date on his Web site.)
But it is surprising that a program like MSBNC's "Hardball," which touts itself as the home of authentic Beltway chatter and which has aired 15 episodes since the Guckert story first emerged, has dedicated just one segment from one show to the Guckert controversy. MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann," however, has been much more aggressive in covering the story. Only CNN has covered the story with any kind of consistency among the 24-hour news channels.
Meanwhile on the newsstands, through Thursday, there had been no meaningful coverage in USA Today or in the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, San Francisco Chronicle, Indianapolis Star, Denver Post, Oakland Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, to name a few that have effectively boycotted the White House press office scandal. Leo Wolinsky, deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, says the Times is running its first Guckert story on Friday, focusing on the guidelines for securing White House press passes. "It's a bit late," he concedes. "We may have been a bit slow to recognize it had become a story of public interest." Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Miami Herald, did not return calls seeking comment on that paper's decision to not report on the story.
At some papers there has been a confusing disconnect for readers between the opinion pages and the news pages when it comes to Gannongate. The Miami Herald, for instance, ran a column by Leonard Pitts decrying the scandal and the lack of outcry it has sparked. The column generated some letters from readers who agreed, criticizing the mainstream media's relative silence on the story. Yet readers who stuck only to the news pages never saw any reference to the Guckert story; it simply did not exist. The same is true of the Detroit Free Press and the San Francisco Chronicle: Both papers published stinging editorials denouncing the White House for letting a fake reporter into briefings, yet neither paper's news sections bothered to cover the controversy.
As for the editorial pages, it's curious that the nation's five largest papers, all pillars of the media establishment (the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today), have been silent on the Guckert saga -- especially when dailies in more out-of-the-way places such as Tulsa, Okla.; Bangor, Maine; Niagara Falls, N.Y.; Augusta County, Va.; and Pensacola, Fla., have all deemed the story troubling enough to require attention, as noted by Media Matters for America, a liberal advocacy group that first raised questions about Guckert and Talon News.
Addressing the media's timidity, Aravosis suggests there's still a reticence on the part of the press, post-Sept. 11, to be tough on President Bush and the Republican White House. "It's getting ridiculous," he says. "It's been three and a half years, and we're still treating him with kid gloves." Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page recently wrote, "If America's mainstream media really were as liberal as conservatives claim we are, we would be ballyhooing the fiasco of James D. Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, with Page 1 banner headlines and hourly bulletins." Instead, the mainstream media is averting its eyes.
It's possible that when the Guckert story took an unexpected turn into the world of gay male escorts some news organizations became skittish about pursuing it, despite the fact that the specifics were laid out, complete with on-the-record confirmation, on Web sites like Americablog.com. Howard Kurtz, who has covered the story for the Washington Post, told the Boston Phoenix this week, "I was surprised at how many major news organizations lagged in telling their readers and viewers what everybody on the Internet already knows: that this guy has a history of posting naked pictures of himself on gay-escort sites." The truth is that many major news organizations have yet to even mention Guckert's name to their viewers and readers, let alone detail his past as a male escort.
What's also curious is that last December another media controversy erupted over the role a journalist played in posing a controversial question to top White House officials. It involved a reporter for the Chattanooga Free Times Press, Edward Lee Pitts, who helped a National Guardsman craft a tough question posed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld regarding the lack of body armor for U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq. Rumsfeld's at-times-cavalier response created a small firestorm. ("You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.") The revelation that Pitts was involved in formulating the question, and the debate over whether he overstepped a journalistic boundary, soon became a story onto itself in the mainstream press. Unlike Guckert, who was criticized for bending the rules to toss softball questions to administration officials, Pitts was accused of bending the rules to ask a question that was too hard.
Although the Pitts story lasted for only one 24-hour news cycle, it was covered by virtually every major news outlet, including ABC, CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Francisco Chronicle -- the very same news organizations that, three weeks into the Guckert saga, have failed to acknowledge the story even exists.
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Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/25/gannon_coverage/print.html
Gannon attended White House Christmas parties -- but who invited him?
Former Talon News Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon (aka James D. Guckert) attended at least two invitation-only events in Washington, D.C.: the 2003 and 2004 White House press Christmas parties. Gannon has been discredited by numerous charges -- most notably that he is a Republican activist who has reproduced sections of Republican Party and White House materials verbatim in his own "news reports," and not a true news reporter. So the question arises: who invited Gannon to these exclusive events?
In a February 11 interview with Editor and Publisher, Gannon claimed that "The only connection I had with [White House press secretary] Scott McClellan was when he got married and I sent him a card." McClellan told Editor & Publisher that Gannon was not issued a permanent White House press corps pass, but obtained only daily passes. And according to a February 18 New York Times article, McClellan said that White House "credentialing is all handled at the staff assistant level."
But in past years, the White House press secretary has played a significant role in arranging the guest list for the Christmas parties. As the Washington Post reported on December 9, 1992: "Some national correspondents who cover the president [George H.W. Bush] have apparently been unceremoniously axed from the annual White House Christmas party list. ... Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, who's said to be wielding the ax for the half-dozen gigs, didn't return a call."
Former President Bill Clinton apparently delegated the responsibility to the White House social secretary, according to the Post on December 25, 1995: "The Clintons draw far and wide to make up their holiday invitation lists, said Ann Stock, White House social secretary. ... The season takes a toll on Stock and her staff. 'It's 16- to 18-hour days for a month,' she said on Friday, adding with evident relief: 'Now everyone can turn to their personal Christmas.'"
But an April 29, 2002, New York Times article suggests that the responsibility in the current Bush White House -- at least for the previous year's party -- again rested with the press secretary: "[then-Press Secretary Ari] Fleischer offered to have Rachel Sunbarger, the 23-year-old, highly efficient manager of the White House press office, work as a clearinghouse to sort invitations [to the White House Correspondents Dinner for administration officials]. ... Ms. Sunbarger, who considers her position 'the greatest job in the world,' said that the invitation task was not as bad as the job she had in December of overseeing the invitations to the White House Christmas party for the clamoring press." McClellan replaced Fleischer as press secretary in July, 2003.
The 2004 White House news media Christmas party had "two shifts of 600 guests each," according to a December 13 New York Times report. As for the significance of the Christmas party, Chicago Tribune columnist Michael Killian observed on December 31, 2003, that receiving an invitation is a sign that "one may consider oneself a member in good standing of the fabled Washington establishment."
— A.S.
Posted to the web on Friday February 18, 2005 at 8
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200502190003

The mole, the US media and a White House coup

The reporter who wasn't is part of a wider press scandal, writes Paul Harris in New York

Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer

For two years Jeff Gannon cut an unobtrusive figure at White House press conferences. The shaven-headed, craggily handsome man worked for an obscure news agency called Talon News, known for its conservative sympathies. He was often the subject of jokes by colleagues on weightier news organisations.
No one is laughing now, because Gannon was far from being a harmless distraction. He was writing under a false name and working for a Republican front organisation. Suddenly, his 'softball' questions to White House officials looked less like eccentricities and more like plotting by an administration which has frequently displayed a dark mastery of the arts of press control.
When it emerged that Gannon was also linked to gay prostitution websites and might be a gay prostitute himself, the scandal as to how he was allowed daily access to the White House grew even murkier. The American media is now being forced to confront the possibility that Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, was simply a Republican plant, used by officials, including President George W Bush, to ask easy questions in difficult press conferences. 'The idea of having a mole in the White House press corp is amazing, but that's what it looks like,' said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University.
But the Gannon affair, which has shocked much of America's political establishment, is just the latest scandal in the media establishment. Newspapers including the New York Times and USA Today have been hit by plagiarism and forgery scandals. Other papers and television stations have been consumed with a soul-searching inquest into how they were misled about non-existent Iraqi weapons programmes. Added to that is growing evidence of a White House campaign to bypass or control the media in its everyday presentation of government policy , which included paying one journalist hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote its policies.
Last week a federal watchdog warned the Bush administration that any video news releases must state that the government is the source. Twice in two years, government departments have been accused of distributing fake news packages, using actors as journalists.
On the internet, the mainstream media is derided and scorned. One question is dominating US newsrooms and television studios: ignored, scandalised and now corrupted, just what is America's mainstream media for anymore?
The extent of the Bush White House's command and control of the press corps is often revealed in the seemingly innocuous White House pool reports. These are dispatches dutifully filed by a correspondent assigned to travel with Bush and contain little but lists of endless meetings, meals eaten and clothes worn. But no detail is too small to be ignored by Bush's ever-watchful press handlers. One report, on 13 August 2004, contained a remark from Bush that it was a 'good question' as to who to support if Iraq's soccer team played the United States in the Olympics. Officials scurried to 'correct' it. 'To clear up any possible misconception ... the president would of course support the American soccer team in any hypothetical game with Iraq,' a new report said. 'The initial report should have done more to reflect the exchange was mainly in jest.'
Such micromanagement has been a hallmark of the Bush White House and its all-powerful policy guru, Karl Rove. Added to that has been what appears to be a concerted effort to subvert the mainstream media.
Administration officials were recently revealed to have paid three senior journalists to promote or design policies. More than $240,000 of taxpayers' cash was paid to black pundit Armstrong Williams to push the agenda of Bush's education department. Critics were blunt in their assessment of what Armstrong's contract with the government meant. 'It is propaganda,' said Melanie Sloan of watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.
At the same time, Bush has held fewer Washington press conferences than any of his modern predecessors, while courting local media, such as small city newspapers, which are perceived as easier to steamroll. During last year's election campaign Bush avoided interviews with leading newspapers, such as the Washington Post , but frequently invited reporters from smaller swing state publications to speak with him on Air Force One. Vice-president Dick Cheney took the strategy one step further and banned New York Times reporters from travelling with him.
The media has not helped its own case. First, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was found to have plagiarised numerous stories. The incident cost Blair his job, forced the editor to resign and was the subject of fevered Manhattan dinner party chatter for months. Then USA Today 's top foreign reporter, Jack Kelley, was discovered to have fabricated stories from around the world and invented interviews and witnesses from Cuba to Jerusalem.
Right-wing media ratcheted up the long-standing conservative complaint that the media is dominated by liberal publications. Though many journalism experts deny that is the case, the image has settled in the American consciousness, forcing newspapers, magazines and television stations to go out of their way to prove they are not liberal. 'We have a conservative media and also a mainstream media, which is also now fairly conservative because it has been forced to deny being liberal,' said Lule.
The Gannon case is a prime illustration. If, during the Clinton administration, a fake reporter from a Democrat front organisation, using a false name, had been exposed as attending White House press conferences it would have been a national scandal. If he had then been shown to be a gay prostitute, the scandal could have threatened a Democrat presidency. With 'Gannon' and Bush there has been no such outcry. The mainstream media has approached the story warily, while right-wing organisations such as Fox News have largely ignored it.
That has created a vacuum in the US media. It is a space being filled by 'bloggers' from both left and right who write personal journals, or weblogs, on the internet. It is here that the real media battles are now being fought. The internet has become a sort of Fifth Estate as the Fourth Estate of the mainstream media has slid toward irrelevance. The groundwork was done mainly by the right. Internet gossip hound Matt Drudge, whose Drudge Report is a key source for every American political journalist, struck the first blow with his breaking of the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Since then a plethora of right wing blogs have sprung up. Unlike Britain, where political blogs are barely part of the debate, internet sites in America are seen as a vital political tool. Conservative bloggers have taken two big scalps recently. Last year bloggers questioned the veracity of a CBS news report on Bush's National Guard service. They dumped enough doubt on the story to cause four CBS reporters to lose their jobs, tarnish the reputation of legendary anchor Dan Rather and insure that the substance of the CBS story - whether Bush fulfilled his service - never emerged as an election issue.
Last week, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, resigned after an internet campaign prompted by his claim that American soldiers targeted journalists in Iraq. Though Jordan said that his remarks had been misinterpreted, the bloggers' revenge was so vehement he ended his 23-year CNN career. One anti-Jordan website, Easongate.com, crowed openly when he quit: 'To every reader, commentator, e-mailer and blogger that committed to this cause, thank you.'
The left has also had victories. It was not the mainstream media that exposed Gannon, but left-wing website Media Matters for America which enlisted other liberal bloggers to help. All the significant breaks in the story emerged online, forcing Gannon to resign, reveal his real name and go into hiding.
Some commentators see the emergence of blogging as a media force as a liberating phenomenon. Unlike the mainstream media, blogging is cheap, easy and open to anyone regardless of qualification or background or money. 'Blogging gives a voice to those who were previously silent,' said Ananda Mitra, a communications professor at Wake Forest University.
Others see it as part of the trend towards partisan journalism. Spearheaded by the nakedly right-wing Fox News, journalism in America has come to resemble a political shouting match rather than any form of debate of the issues. But with soaring viewership, Fox has emerged as one of the most powerful forces in the media landscape. Other networks, such as CNN and MSNBC, have sought to copy Fox's personality-led and opinion-based news.
The media is in the midst of a transformation which the Bush administration is keen to foster. They have discovered that a partisan and atomised media can be controlled, manipulated and used to an unprecedented degree.
It is a lesson that liberals are also learning. In answer to the talk radio of Rush Limbaugh - one of America's most popular and conservative commentators - liberal groups have set up Air America. Defying the critics, it has established itself as a left-wing radio network every bit as ruthless in skewering its opponents' points of view as its right-wing equivalents. In answer to right-wing television, former presidential candidate Al Gore is rumoured to be seeking backers to finance a liberal television network. Now both sides are equally ready and willing to use any means necessary to tear the other apart. The old-fashioned mainstream media is disappearing. 'Once that pattern is put in place, it is going to be hard to break,' said Lule.
How the media shot themselves in the foot
A series of scandals have not helped the American media's reputation and its struggle for independence.
New York Times
Reporter Jayson Blair was fired and the newspaper's editor forced to resign after Blair was found to have plagiarised numerous stories.
USA Today
Foreign reporter Jack Kelly was discovered to have invented stories, interviews and witnesses from around the world.
CBS
Four reporters lost their jobs and the reputation of legendary anchor Dan Rather was tarnished after doubts were cast on a news report of Bush's National Guard Service.
CNN
Chief news executive Eason Jordan resigned his 23-year career after he claimed that American soldiers had deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1418539,00.html