The Jeff Gannon Affair
You couldn't make this one up if you tried. James D. Guckert a/k/a Jeff Gannon gained access to many White House briefings and was one of the few reporters allowed to lob a question (of course it was friendly) at President Bush recently. He used the name Jeff Gannon, and no one knew that it was phony until the details of this affair began to emerge.
Guckert's press credentials turn out to be an affiliation with Talon News Service, a two-bit conservative Texan Web site set up as a side-show for GOPUSA ("Bringing the conservative message to America") and conservative Bobby Eberle, apparently for the primary purpose of providing non-partisan credentials for Guckert. Here’s a link to Talon, Talon’s statement about Guckert's resignation, and a link with information about the allegation that Talon was set up just to credential Guckert/Gannon.
Amazingly, that’s just the beginning of the level of sleaze involved. Guckert/Gannon's journalism education consisted of a $50 two-day seminar at The Leadership Institute. The man was also involved in a venture to register domain names that, according to a story reported in the Washington Post and elsewhere, included HotMilitaryStud.com, MilitaryEscorts.com, and so on. According to a story published in Salon, there is even some evidence that the man was himself an "escort." Here's a site with a pretty good round-up of the allegations.
OK. This is a gentleman with less than no journalism credentials who was used by the White House for propaganda purposes.
From my viewpoint, the story is really about the power of the blogosphere, and a continuation of the Eason Jordan story. Right-wing bloggers brought about Jordan's fall from grace over some ill-advised (but technically off-the-record) remarks about the US military targeting journalists in Iraq. In the Gannon affair, left-wing bloggers brought about the exposure of a phony who was helping to manufacture propaganda for the administration. (Admission to White House press events without real credentials or a back ground check? I guess they knew who he was...)
Here is one blog that has been covering the story:
A fake pornographer touting Bush's right-wing family values administration as a White House corps reporter? And it takes bloggers to expose this widely? What are we coming to?
A world in which a new power for information dissemination has arisen: the blogosphere.
Posted by Harold Davis at February 16, 2005 08:13 AM
