Gannon goes International

[julialnyc]

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 intitially 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 progresssive media to counter the right wing noise machine?

--J.C.

http://www.johnconyers.com/index.asp?Type=...2-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...1418539,00.html

[Cha]

1. Just in time for bush's big fat

fake European tour.

[Mist]

3. Maybe some real reporters will ask him about it? n/t

[bush_is_wacko]

2. Link doesn't work. n/t

[murray hill farm]

4. I wonder if...

the European press will ask him about Gannon? They love a good scandal...especially one involving politics and sex.

[julialnyc]

5. hopefully