Gannon Gate - ConyersBlog 2/20/2005 10:30am

[Al-CIAda]

Gannon Gate
ConyersBlog 2/20/2005 10:30am

While the Gannon scandal breaks into the mainstream media this weekend, the story behind the story -- why the story was initially ignored -- is beginning to be examined, not just in the blogosphere, but in the international press. As this story continues to develop, it is worth examining this question, and the additional question of whether the liberal blogosphere successfully shamed the mainstream media into doing their jobs. If this is the case, are we finally developing a progressive media to counter the right wing noise machine?

--J.C.

http://www.johnconyers.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={B166974A-C132-4EC3-9682-FE6E08C1A584}

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Focus: News control
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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.

Con't-
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1418539,00.html

[Eloriel]

1. CONEYRS HAS A BLOG? Toooooo kewl.

Ooh, I LOVE it. Bookmarked that baby. Most of the entries are signed "J.C.," too. I LOVE it.

Long live blogs!

[sarcasmo]

2. Conyers is the best thing in Politics in Michigan Dem History.

[5thGenDemocrat]

4. Well, one of 'em

I'd put Soapy Williams, Carl Levin and Phil Hart on that list, too.
John
I'd certainly agree he's the (other) best Michigan Dem today, though.

[KoKo]

3. He's got good links there....Good for him.

I just added it to my bookmarks. Having to jump all around to find articles on "Gan/Gurk" is scrambling my brain. Looks like he has a good staffer who is linking the best of it.

[Al-CIAda]

5. Conyers giving props...

2/23/2005 3:30pm

Blogging Made Easy . . . Talon News StyleBy Talon News standards, the following will all be original reporting.

A ‘reporter’ from Talon News, the conservative outlet which employed disgraced correspondent Jeff Gannon, appears to have repeatedly plagiarized content from other mainstream media publications, including Reuters, the New York Times, and Fox News (thank you, Raw Story, for making this post so simple).

As a matter of professional ethics, I believe that journalists should distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context. Journalists should never plagiarize (it must be a coincidence that the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics agrees with me).

The plagiarism story is particularly ironic, given that Jeff Gannon is contemplating "suing liberal interest groups, bloggers, and others," for what he termed "political assassination." He is presumably pondering some sort of libel action, or perhaps he harbors some vague hope of proving invasion of privacy. This would, of course, require that what’s been said about him isn’t true (though he hasn’t denied it), and was maliciously published or broadcast by people who knew it wasn’t true or made no effort to confirm or refute it (Keith Olbermann can be very helpful with legal analysis).

Deception and confusion appear to be the running themes of Gannon-gate. During the February 10 White House briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan stated that Jeff Gannon, "...like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly" in order to receive his day pass to press briefings. It has now been confirmed that Jeff Gannon was in the White House briefing room, actively participating in these briefings, as early as February 28, 2003 a full month before Talon News even existed (an interesting fact…it’s good thing Congresswoman Slaughter and the Stakeholder caught it).

In other news, Jeff Gannon was cited by the Washington Post as having the only access to an internal CIA memo that named Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent. Gannon, in a question posed to Wilson in an October 2003 interview, referred to the memo (to which no other news outlet had access, according to the Post). Gannon subsequently has been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury looking into the Plame outing (reporting has gotten easier since I found Daily Kos).

Maybe we should give Gannon and his friends at Talon News some credit. Being a reporter can be easy. Finding good sources to steal from is hard.

-J.C.

http://www.johnconyers.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={B166974A-C132-4EC3-9682-FE6E08C1A584}