http://www.tampatrib.com/News/MGBTXP7TI5E.htmlFor two years a man named Jeff Gannon attended White House press briefings as a reporter for a conservative online news service with ties to a Texas Republican activist.
A few weeks ago he even asked President Bush a sympathetic question at a press conference.
Shortly afterward, liberal bloggers - writers who report from their own online sites - found out that Jeff Gannon isn't really Jeff Gannon. He's Jim Guckert, a guy with little, if any, training in journalism. Moreover, he apparently has another career as a $200-an-hour escort. His photographs appear on gay Web sites. When this information was made public, he resigned his day job.
What do we make of all this? Some conservative bloggers claim the liberals wanted Gannon's scalp because his questions and writings favored the president. The liberal writers say that's not true. They decry Gannon's ``family values hypocrisy'' and shift the focus to concerns about media manipulation and the president's safety.
Gannon's presence in the White House is an issue because the administration has paid commentators like Armstrong Williams to push the president's message. By adopting such a practice, the administration has left itself open to the suggestion that it would place a plant among the press gallery.