Liberal’ Media Silent About Guckert Saga

[Jon8503]

by Joe Conason - Imagine that this ‘journalist’ had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate.


Proof that "the liberal media" is but a figment of right-wing mythology has now arrived in the person of one James Guckert, formerly known as Jeff Gannon. Were the American media truly liberal—or merely unafraid to be called liberal—the saga of Mr. Guckert’s short, strange, quasi-journalistic career would be resounding across the airwaves.

The intrinsic media interest of the Guckert/Gannon story should be obvious to anyone who has followed his tale, which touches on hot topics from the homosexual underground and the investigation into the outing of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the political power of the Internet. But our supposedly liberal media becomes quite squeamish when reporting anything that might humiliate the Bush White House and the Republican Party.

Until very recently, Mr. Guckert served as the White House correspondent for Talon News, a Web site owned and operated by a group of Texas Republican activists who also run a highly partisan site called GOPUSA.com. Mr. Guckert resigned from his Talon job after liberal bloggers exposed his ties to Web sites promoting homosexual prostitution. On Valentine’s Day, AmericaBlog.org posted new evidence indicating that Mr. Guckert not only constructed those gay-play-for-pay sites, but worked as a male escort himself—and continued to do so until he got his first White House press pass in 2003.

Using his "Jeff Gannon" alias, Mr. Guckert soon became a familiar face in the briefing room, where White House press secretary Scott McClellan would call on him as "Jeff." No doubt Mr. McClellan welcomed his mushy-soft, Democrat-baiting questions.

http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp

[punpirate]

1. I've even seen this avoidance of the net...

... among local-level reporters. In one community action, I'd found lots of information on the web, mostly from government sites, on a particularly nasty local firm, and was told by a local reporter, "I don't trust anything on the web." Wouldn't look at anything, including government info suggesting that the firm's safety record was deficient.

The press today is happy to take whatever the White House says as gospel, but won't do any research, using all the tools available, including what's on the internet. One has to ignore spurious, unsupported information (including on DU), but denying that good information exists simply because it comes from documents on the web is just head-in-the-sand behavior.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Funny I've got more substantiated information,from(DU) than money..

Grubbing News networks that will cling to that ambivalent state of being (progressive).

[punpirate]

3. Well, read what I've said...

... I'm speaking of people mistaking opinion for fact--that happens here, too. I get lots of hard information here, too--that's why I spend time here.

Cheers.