Frank Rich: The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

[spinbaby]

A good one from Frank Rich:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/arts/20rich.html
-----

FRANK RICH

The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Published: February 20, 2005

THE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005. A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.

[leftchick]

1. First MoDo now Frank Rich!! This is Fantastic....

~snip~

If we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "Jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like Fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power. But as Mr. Olbermann explained, "Jeff Gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "Senior White House Correspondent" like Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than The Onion. Yet the video broadcast by Mr. Olbermann was not fake. "Jeff" was in the real White House, and he did have those exchanges with the real Mr. McClellan and the real Mr. Bush.

"Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert. His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists. Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention. Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."

How this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved. "Jeff" has now quit Talon News not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an X-rated $200-per-hour "escort." If Mr. Guckert, the author of Talon News exclusives like "Kerry Could Become First Gay President," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic Republican closet cases, that's not without interest. But it shouldn't distract from the real question - that is, the real news - of how this fake newsman might be connected to a White House propaganda machine that grows curiouser by the day. Though Mr. McClellan told Editor & Publisher magazine that he didn't know until recently that Mr. Guckert was using an alias, Bruce Bartlett, a White House veteran of the Reagan-Bush I era, wrote on the nonpartisan journalism Web site Romenesko, that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." (Otherwise, it would be a rather amazing post-9/11 security breach.)

... That last line should BITE THEM IN THE ASS!!!

[Eric J in MN]

2. It's nice that Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd

of the New York Times are covering "Jeff Gannon."

Has anyone at the Washington Post except Howard Kurtz?

(Howard Kurtz implies that the biggest issues surrounding "Jeff Gannon" is that bloggers violated his privacy.)

[leftchick]

3. That is right. Kurtz is distorting the issue...

those dirty nasty librul bloggers defaming a pornographer like Gannon/Guckert! What are they thinking?

[prodigal_green]

20. What privacy?

The guy was advertising his services on the web. Privacy is explicitly NOT expected.

[Fleshdancer]

26. Exactly...if you make $$ doing it, it isn't "private"

could you imagine if we held that same ridiculous standard for non-sexual illegal activity??? "We can't investigate John Doe's drug deals because, well, that's his private life"

Sex for free is private. Sex for money is the oldest profession in the book.

[leftchick]

4. Holy Payola Crapola! I had no Idea it was a 250 Million Kitty!

~snip~

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

[Eric J in MN]

6. There should be a ban on federal money going to p.r. firms (nt)

nt

[tsuki]

17. There are a lot of degrees being given in

Communications and PR. Americans have, over the years, become quite saavy to advertising and Advertising Firms are seeing clients move to PR Firms.

[Eric J in MN]

21. PR firms have a right to exist, but they shouldn't get our tax money (nt)

nt

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. "Ketchum"

Interesting name. Coincidence? :tinfoilhat:

[spinbaby]

11. I don't get it

What coincidence?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

12. Play on words.

Ketchum= Catch 'em (if you can).

[spinbaby]

13. Okay

Must be a bit slow this morning. Need more coffee.

[enough]

5. Great article.

Puts the whole thing in the right light without ignoring or over-playing the sex angle.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. Rich nails all the essentials. Dowd's is a puff piece by comparison

Not that Maureen's killer article isn't a killer, but Frank nails down the essential aspects of the propoganda campaign, and ties together all loose ends including Plame and Novak:

Mr. Blitzer never questioned Gannon/Guckert's assertion that Talon News "is a separate, independent news division" of GOPUSA. Only in a brief follow-up interview a day later did he ask Gannon/Guckert to explain why he was questioned by the F.B.I. in the case that may send legitimate reporters to jail: Mr. Guckert has at times implied that he either saw or possessed a classified memo identifying Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative. Might that memo have come from the same officials who looked after "Jeff Gannon's" press credentials? Did Mr. Guckert have any connection with CNN's own Robert Novak, whose publication of Ms. Plame's name started this investigation in the first place? The anchor didn't go there.

Everybody recommend this thing to the top!

[NewYorkerfromMass]

8. talking about how "everything is scripted"

Even now, we know that the fake news generated by the six known shills is only a small piece of the administration's overall propaganda effort. President Bush wasn't entirely joking when he called the notoriously meek March 6, 2003, White House press conference on the eve of the Iraq invasion "scripted" while it was still going on. (And "Jeff Gannon" apparently wasn't even at that one). Everything is scripted.

The pre-fab "Ask President Bush" town hall-style meetings held during last year's campaign (typical question: "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?") were carefully designed for television so that, as Kenneth R. Bazinet wrote last summer in New York's Daily News, "unsuspecting viewers" tuning in their local news might get the false impression they were "watching a completely open forum." A Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide propagandistic news items, some of them possibly false, to foreign news media was shut down in 2002 when it became an embarrassing political liability. But much more quietly, another Pentagon propaganda arm, the Pentagon Channel, has recently been added as a free channel for American viewers of the Dish Network. Can a Social Security Channel be far behind?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/arts/20rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=

[FreedomAngel82]

24. Sometimes I wonder

if the second debate was an open form?

[KaliTracy]

28. the questions were supposedly screened before the debate - if the person

asking the question went off topic they were going to shut off the microphone -- and * and Kerry were not to be privy to the questions.

From Washington Post.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38145-2004Sep21.html

And among the special rules for the one town-hall-style debate:

• "Prior to the start of the debate, audience members will be asked to submit their questions in writing to the moderator. No third party, including both the Commission and the campaigns, shall be permitted to see the questions. The moderator shall select and approve all questions to be posed by the audience members to the candidates. . . . The moderator will . . . eliminate any questions that the moderator deems inappropriate. . . . If any audience member poses a question or makes a statement that is in any material way different than the question that the audience member earlier submitted to the moderator for review, the moderator will cut-off the questioner and advise the audience that such non-reviewed questions are not permitted."

• "The audience members shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion, and the audience member's microphone shall be turned off after he or she completes asking the question."

the original document/agreement is here http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/pr_2004_0920b.pdf

[radwriter0555]

9. TURN the TEEVEE and the RADIO OFF.

Start READING your news and information.

Then you aren't subject to idiocy from mindless twit actors in 8 second sound bytes.

[moggie12]

14. Fantastic article -- Thank you, Frank Rich & the NYT

Best line from the article:

"Even now, we know that the fake news generated by the six known shills is only a small piece of the administration's overall propaganda effort."

The first step in stopping the propaganda is for people to say it exists.

[Beetwasher]

15. Wow! This is the Definitive Article So Far

THANK YOU MR. RICH!!!!!!!!!

[oasis]

16. Rich skewers Blitzer for throwing softballs to Gannon. Tons of other info.

IMO, slightly more intense than Maureen Dowd's article.

[bklyncowgirl]

18. One of the best MSM reports I've seen on Gannon

Frank Rich nails it. Nice credit to Olberman there too.

[moggie12]

19. Kicking this because it's such a good article n/t

[Shopaholic]

22. The Times is kicking ass on this

First Maureen Dowd's column and now this--by the way--look at the dateline on this story-it's not going to officially be published until Sunday's edition!!!

[moggie12]

23. I missed that -- they put it on-line before it was printed?

That's weird -- do they usually do that??

[NewYorkerfromMass]

25. Yes! Good catch. It is common to pre-publish Sunday's stories

at the Times.

Message to DU readers:
Have you recommended this yet?

[redqueen]

27. My only complaint with this article

is that he didn't mention that Gannon/Guckert wasn't even at Talon News when he first gained access to the white house press room.

That should be mentioned as well.

Great article!