PressThink: In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press

In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press

Before the certification of "Jeff Gannon" as a White House reporter there was the Bush Administration's de-certification move against the Washington press. These two things are deeply related.

The little Secret Service agent at the National Constitution Center seems more interested in John Ashcroft’s tight USA Patriot Act spin-tour schedule than any constitutional rights when he stops me from following a flock of television reporters heading for a brief presser with the man who could not even beat a corpse.

That’s Howard Altman of Philadelphia’s City Paper (Aug. 28, 2003) describing the experience of trying to cover Attorney General John Ashcroft during his speaking tour on behalf of the Patriot Act.

As the flock disappears down a hall in a hurried scurry, the bespectacled woman in the black dress who could have been Ainsley, the perky Republican from The West Wing, looks at me and waxes apologetic. “I am sorry,” she says as the last of the camera crews whiz by. “But he is not talking to print. Only talking to television.”

That was when I first became aware that the Bush Administration was putting an end to business-as-usual between the executive and the press. Ashcroft had Secret Service agents, or others in his employ, bar newspaper reporters—including of course those at the big national dailies—from press opportunities as he traveled the country arguing for the Patriot Act.

It was a sign: new sherriff in town. “We know who our friends are.” All that. Ashcroft wasn’t the first to declare local TV the only interview worth doing. Except there were certain ideas attached to his move, and these led outward from the Patriot Act into the wider political culture. Ideas like: Eliminate the filter (and guess who that is?) Howard Kurtz reported this on Sep. 15, 2003:

Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock says her boss, with few exceptions, is only granting short interviews to local TV stations as a way of “explaining key facts directly to the American people and not having as much of a filter from people who are already invested in having a different view of it.”

Ashcroft’s person tells us the story right there. She says it is legitimate to exclude the traditional press, and deny it the role of questioner on behalf of the public, because a.) this group has forfeited all claim to legitimacy by being so invested in a “different view;” and b.) the Attorney General is perfectly capable of explaining the key facts to the American people himself, with the kind assistance of local television stations (she did not say “reporters”) who know enough not to filter the message.

It is true that all Administrations want to speak to the nation in an unfiltered way; there’s nothing notable about that. All at one time or another see the press as “against” them. All cry foul— and in the name of the facts! Hating the press is normal behavior in the White House. So is favoring the sympathetic correspondent. What Ashcroft was doing went beyond all this.

There’s a difference between going around the press in an effort to avoid troublesome questions, and trying to unseat the idea that these people, professional journalists assigned to cover politics, have a legitimate role to play in our politics. Ashcroft was out to unseat that idea about the traditional press. He wanted it out of the picture of how you battle for public opinion.

“He is not talking to print. Only talking to television.”

John Ashcroft in the fall of ‘03 was simply doing his part in a broader de-certification move that has been mounted against the political press since 2001. His tactics turned out to be among the milder measures the Bush forces were willing to take in pursuit of a policy that I would call post press— meaning after it is declared from the top that journalists represent no one but themselves.

Before the certification of “Jeff Gannon” as a White House reporter who was good to go there was the Bush Administration’s de-certification move against the Washington press, which it felt had to go. These two things are deeply related.

The idea that joins them was stated by Andrew Card, Bush’s chief of staff: “They don’t represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election,” said Card. “I don’t believe you have a check-and-balance function.”

See? No check and balance role. Not representative. That’s post-press thinking, coming from the Chief of Staff. It is a political innovation for which Bush does not get enough credit.

And here is what it yields in the press room, an emptiness described by Dan Froomkin at Nieman Watchdog in December:

Even more of a charade these days are the daily briefings held by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose robotic adherence to repeating the predetermined messages of the day — no matter what questions come his way — has driven some correspondents to despair. Only narcissists and cranks could possibly feel they are getting much out of asking a question at a McClellan press briefing. Not coincidentally, the cranks are increasingly sitting at the front of the briefing room and getting called upon, in part because some big media organizations don’t even bother to fill their assigned chairs anymore. What’s the point?

Recall what happened to the Air Traffic Controllers during Ronald Reagan’s first term. They were government workers—11,000 of them— fired in 1981 for going on strike when their contract said they couldn’t. They were replaced, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified their union.

“Jeff Gannon” (really James Dale Guckert) can be thought of as the replacement press, a fake journalist with a fake name working for a fake news organization, asking fake questions at a real press event. Until he asked one of President Bush that showed “unusually blatant sycophancy,” as the New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg wrote.

This tipped off the bloggers and the online troops of column left, and the investigation of Gannon and Talon News, his fake employer, began. See this summary from Media Citizen, this resource from Daily Kos, this background from Media Matters, this page of reports from Salon.

But also see Stuck at the Gates by Jon Garfunkel, showing how blogger Eileen Smith of Oregon began an effort in February 2004 to investigate Gannon, which alerted Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post. But until January of this year the story didn’t go anywhere, even though Smith had asked about Gannon’s credentials, and begged the bigger blogs to look into it. The look is happening now. See the new blog Propagannon, devoted entirely to the investigation.

Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World has the outrageousness of it exactly right. I also like Brian Montopoli’s description of what “Jeff Gannon” did with his moment in the national spotlight, from CJR Daily:

Gannon asked questions designed not to get information from Bush but to demonstrate his allegiance to him, not to mention his disgust with Democrats and his own ostensible colleagues. Real journalists, the ones who belong in press conferences, know that access to a president is a rare gift, and they know enough not to squander it. Gannon threw away his opportunity in favor of self-aggrandizing partisan spectacle. He put himself and his agenda ahead of the public good, and he did it in a manner so egregious that he left little doubt of his intentions.

But this is troubling only from the perspective of a certain history that it has been the Bush Admninistration’s business to refute and reject. Basically it is the history of professionalism in the political press, the attempt to establish a tradition of reportorial authority apart from raw politics. (See the New Yorker’s Nick Lemann on the weakening of this tradition.)

Creating “Jeff Gannon” as a credible White House correspondent, and creating radical doubt about the intentions of mainstream journalists (in order to de-certify the traditional press) are two parts of the same effort, which stretches beyond the Bush team itself to allies in Republican Party politics, and new actors like Sinclair Broadcasting, or FreeRepublic.com, or Hugh Hewitt, or these guys.

It is this larger picture that accounts for a professional tribe of journalists who, as Lemann said, “collectively felt both more harshly attacked and less important” in 2004. The more harshly attacked part comes from the Culture War rumbling below, while the message “you’re unimportant” is sent directly from the top.

Ron Suskind is one of the journalists most attuned to this part of the story, and in October of last year he told Eric Boehlert of Salon (who has also been following it) what he saw:

Do you think there’s a coordinated attempt to knock journalists down so that what they have to say is taken less seriously?
There is a varied, national, forceful, coordinated campaign to do that, to try to create doubt about the long-held and long-respected work of the mainstream media. Absolutely.

So that Americans believe that what we do and say, what the mainstream media offer, is not of value, is not honest, is not factually accurate. And [that we are] not in any way connected to strong traditions of American public dialogue, that we’ve been co-opted, that we’re not objective, and that essentially we are carrying forward an agenda.

That’s de-certification, in my lexicon. Out of it was born the Bush Thesis about the press, which I examined here and Ken Auletta reported on here.

Modern Fourth Estate thinking (which is only about 50 years old) held that the White House correspondents—the people who have the regular, “hard” passes—were one of the checks and balances in official Washington, and thus part of the political establishment any President had to work with.

The press had a certain power that came in part from its longevity on the scene—how long has Bob Woodward been in office?—but also because the news media were gatekeepers to the big national audience (the networks did that) and a bulletin board for the players in Washington politics (the big newspapers were that.)

The press was tameable, sure. It could be managed, and manipulated. It could be fed photo opportunities. There were different ways to play it, but the assumption held that this “beast” was going to be there in the White House every day, and at all the stops the President made. Realism alone called for a certain wary respect. The national news media were considered part of the process, a “fixture.” They were sometimes called the permanent government.

During the two terms of George W. Bush, this idea has been dethroned and declared invalid. Political journalism—such as might come from the Washington Post, Newsweek, or City Paper—was re-classified as a special interest, a kind of lobbying force for itself, or the opposition.

“For perhaps the first time,” Aluetta wrote, “the White House has come to see reporters as special pleaders—pleaders for more access and better headlines—as if the press were simply another interest group, and, moreover, an interest group that’s not nearly as powerful.” I summarized the new thesis in April 2004:

Behold the basics of President Bush’s press think. You don’t represent the public. You’re not a part of the checks and balances. I don’t have to answer your questions. And you don’t have that kind of muscle anymore.

Whomever declared “Jeff Gannon” a valid correspondent believed, first, in the invalidity of the regular White House correspondents, whose representatives had of course rejected Gannon for a regular pass. As he rejected them. Froomkin reported on it (March 10, 2004) in the White House Briefing column he does for the Washington Post:

Gannon works for a tiny, supremely conservative organization called Talon News which publishes a Web site by the same name as well as one called GOPUSA.com. With the sole exception of Gannon, who says he is compensated, all the “reporters” are volunteers.
Gannon’s presence in the White House briefing room is something of an irritant to most of the press corps, which considers his questions at briefings to be preposterous softballs.

And in return, Gannon sometimes writes on his own Web site about his views of the corps and how there is “perhaps no depth to which it will not sink in order to undermine a presidency.”

In this view, there is no such thing as journalism; there is only raw politics. According to Media Matters, Gannon said on a Webcast radio show January 27th that the White House press corps “deserves to be gone around because they’re not telling the truth about Social Security reform.”

The key word is deserves. An illegitimate press demands not only national scorn but practical replacement. It is in this sense that “Jeff Gannon” deserved his press pass, Armstrong Williams deserved his $240,000, and Ketchum public relations deserved $97 million of taxpayer money to help the Bush Administration communicate the message.

(My sense is that the big uncovered facts in this scandal are to be found there, in the $97 million pot of post-press money that went to Ketchum, a PR firm willing to bend the rules, and help create a replacement for real journalism.)

In the press room of the White House that thinks itself post-press, many of the people who have been de-certified still show up for their jobs each day, expecting some kind of briefing, as if they were, still, the Fourth Estate, as if they yet had some role in national politics. It probably galls the Administration that the ritual with real journalists has to go on, since “they don’t represent the public any more than other people do.”

After Matter: Notes, reactions and links…

Here’s some news, announced yesterday: I have been nominated for Blogger of the Year in 2004 by The Week magazine, as part of its second annual Opinion Awards. (Press release.) The other nominees are Power Line, Matthew Yglesias, Hugh Hewitt, and Low Culture. According to the letter they sent me, the Blogger of the Year award honors “bloggers who consistently produced work that was thoughtful, provocactive and that made a difference.” Thanks!

Is this site the Firefox of regional journalism? (See Scott Rosenberg’s superb rendering of why Firefox will thrive even if Microsoft scrambles to improve Internet Explorer.)

Eric Boehlert of Salon continues his standout coverage: “Why has the mainstream media ignored the White House media access scandal?”

Here’s an angle: Leading “new media” conservative website WorldNetDaily is furious at Gannon for being… a fake, an embarrassment to allies, a pretend conservative journalist, without the tools to succeed. Joseph Farah in a commentary:

There is no substitute for good journalism. There is no substitute for seeking the truth. There is no substitute for upholding high ethical standards. There is no substitute for fierce independence.
What the pretenders did backfired. They have hurt their own ideological cause more than they know. They have tarnished the image of the administration they championed. They have undermined the cause of the responsible New Media and the free press in America.

The rest is worth reading. Sounds remarkably like the Pseudo-Conservative Outrage Machine described by the Daily Howler.

Meanwhile, “Jeff Gannon” recently re-launched his website (Funny slogan… “A Voice of the New Media: So feared by the Left it had to take me down.”) AmericaBlog, one of the spear carriers on the story, has a point-by-point reply.

The best single text for understanding “Jeff Gannon” and his role in the White House press room is this video download from Keith Olbermann’s staff at MSNBC. It shows Scott McClellan relying on “Gannon” and not just for softball questions. “Go ahead, Jeff” is such a good title for this story.

Anyone interested in the “blogs mobilize” part of the Gannon story will be interested in this post, Battle For The Blogosphere: “How The Lefty Blogs Can Win The Blogosphere, Revive Their Party, And Save Our Country (And Why They Won’t).”

The Nashua Advocate adds some interesting detail about “Gannon” and his methods. In multiple posts, whyareweback keeps proving how fake Talon News is.

Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher: Both Houses of Congress Get Involved in ‘Gannon’ Case. Bears watching.

“I’d have no problem with an amateur like Jeff Gannon asking the President softball questions, if he were transparent about his political affiliation (‘Jeff Gannon, GOPUSA’ might work) and if I saw the President take hardball questions from liberal bloggers in return.” Sed politics has a different take. Check into it.

David Corn of The Nation has problems with Gannongate. (His term, not mine…)

White House daily briefings should be open to as diverse a group as possible. There is a need for professional accreditation; space is limited. Yet there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing journalists with identifiable biases to pose questions to the White House press secretary and even the president… Last year, political bloggers—many of whom have their own biases and sometimes function as activists—sought credentials to the Democratic and Republican conventions. That was a good thing. Why shouldn’t Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, John Aravosis, or Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos) be allowed to question Scott McClellan or George W. Bush?

Mark Cooper, who also writes for The Nation, has a similar take.

From the Observer in the UK: 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.” The wider scandal is the subversion of the press. He gets most of it right, although a little breathlessly. Good on the bloggers role too.

The Los Angeles Times picks “confused fluff” as its genre for examining the Gannon Story. Johanna Neuman, “An Identity Crisis Unfolds in a Not-So-Elite Press Corps.” Weightless and banal, except for this idea at the end:

“I look at the Gannon story — I used to refer to him as Jeff GOP — as demonstrating the impact of televising the press briefing,” said Martha Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University.
“The television lens has brought into the briefing room people who have a political viewpoint and find the briefing a way to express it.”

Wall Street Journal reporters Christopher Cooper and John D. McKinnon say it’s become about “fringe” characters:

Both the question and the questioner exemplify a steady evolution that has occurred in the White House briefing room in recent years. Once the clubby preserve of big-name newspapers and networks, it has lately become a political stage where a growing assortment of reporters, activists and bloggers function not only as journalists but as participants in a unique form of reality TV.

For background, see PressThink (April 25, 2004), Bush to Press: “You’re Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don’t Accept That.” And Ken Aueltta, Fortress Bush: How the White House keeps the press under control.

For a brief sketch, with links, of PressThink’s earlier attempts to piece together the Bush White House’s strategy of de-certifying the national press corps, beginning in fall of 2003, read on…”

It started, as I said in my post, with John Ashcroft: National Explainer. (September 16, 2003, shortly after PressThink’s debut.) Why Karen Ryan Deserved What She Got (March 31, 2004) was my second look at the Bush Administration’s assault on the practice of journalism— the impersonation of a reporter by PR woman Ryan.

In a follow up, Flacks Cannot Say They’re “Reporting” Anymore, (April 20, 2004) I told of pressuring the Public Relations Society of America to either declare what Ryan did wrong, or say out loud that they wouldn’t. (They did, meekly.)

My first look at the Bush Thesis, which I consider an imaginative leap in press relations, was A Prime Time News Conference Before a Special Interest: Make Sense to You? (April 13, 2004) I was asking: if Bush meant what he said about “just another special interest,” why would he call a press conference at a rocky moment? That led to Bush to Press: “You’re Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don’t Accept That.”(April 25, 2004) where I explained the Bush Thesis, and the de-certification impulse, in more depth.

I also learned something from the reactions. Many on the cultural right cheered my report on the Bush Thesis. They saw it as just, and just what was needed. They loved it that Bush stood up to journalists. (You represent the American public? I don’t think so.) For a time, Bush to Press was PressThink’s most heavily read post. The put down made sense to them. They saw no problem with it.

That reaction was one thing that led to There’s Signal in That Noise: The White House, the Reality Principle and the Press (June 23, 2004): “Not engaging with opponents’ arguments, not permitting discordant voices a hearing, not giving facts on the ground their proper weight, not admitting mistakes— all are of a piece with not letting the ‘liberal media’ cloud your thinking. This is the Bush way. And disengaging from the press has been a striking innovation of this White House.”

I examined the cultural front and the Right’s complaints with the press in Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes (Oct. 4, 2004), which tried to distinguish between those “frustrated and angry with the traditional news media,” who want changes in the institution, and another group, “posing as critics of bias,” who simply want to discredit and destroy it.

On. October 28, 2004, I was quoted by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times, “I think there’s a campaign under way to totally politicize journalism and totally politicize press criticism… It’s really an attack not just on the liberal media or press bias, it’s an attack on professionalism itself, on the idea that there could be disinterested reporters.”

In The Coming Apart of An Ordered World: Bloggers Notebook, Election Eve (Oct. 31, 2004) I told of getting phone calls from editors alarmed about the coordinated attacks they were feeling as the election drew closer. I also nominated Ron Suskind’s New York Times magazine article, “Without a Doubt” for campaign piece of the year— a heroic effort to describe the “leap” in thinking that the Bush team has made.

Then on the day after the 2004 election I wrote Are We Headed for an Opposition Press? “The Bush White House has the national press in a box,” I wrote. “As with so many other situations, they have changed the world and allowed the language of the old world to keep running while exploring unchallenged the fact of the new. The old world was the Fourth Estate, and the watchdog role of the press, the magic of the White House press conference. It was a feeling that, though locked in struggle much of the time, journalists and presidents needed each other. Although it was never put this way, they glamourized Washington politics together, and this helped both.

“In Bushworld, all is different.”

Finally, Bloggers Are Missing in Action as Ketchum Tests the Conscience of PR described the falsification of journalism by means of a public relations firm, Ketchum, favored by the Bush Administration with $97 million in contracts, one of which went to conservative columnist Armstrong Williams.

Now the trail has led to Jeff Gannon, and In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press. As far as I’m concerned, it is all one story. But I do not pretend to understand it yet.

Posted by Jay Rosen at February 25, 2005 12:45 AM Print

Jay-- thanks for the summary. I'm a nite owl too, so it looks like I get first dibs on the response. I like the the Suskind quote; I liked it so much I had quoted it in my December essay on rage against the media. :-) I think it's an important point to consider when we press-thinkers where our media criticism hat. With the {elite|mainstream} media, we want to be careful to mend it, not end it. That explains why I was sticking up for the Times at the WebCred conference vs. the blogsmarm in the room.

For the Stuck At the Gates piece which you cited, I put on my standalone journalist hat, and tried contacting Eileen, as well some of the Kos researchers on this case this month. One of the curious points, brought up by SusanG on Daily Kos, was the irony of them being pseudonymous, trying to out another quasi-reporter's quasi-pseudonymity. There is obviously no comparison, but it's an interesting parallel. I'm not sure what I would have learned, but clearly the conditions were not in place for this story to amplify in 2004.

To address Eric Boehlart's point on the silence of the media, I just wanted to offer a slight amendment to your summary. Indeed, Eileen alerted Dan Froomkin, but bear in mind what Froomkin wrote the next day: "Within the press corps, Gannon is known for asking softball questions." Wow. It's amazing how what seems quite normal to the press corps is a big surprise to the rest of us.

I have a practical question for PressThink: do we agree that, if the WH Press has turned into a circus (as Dana Milbank charges), and this is an affront to democracy, can we get back on the path to normality by demanding some transparency as to who's who in the press room?

And I also have a theoretical question for PressThink: Have we reached the absurd end of public/advocacy journalism? Or, can you salvage it by writing off this example as some sort of bastard offspring, calling it "puppet journalism"?

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 25, 2005 3:52 AM | Permalink

That is a stunningly coherent summary of an enormous subject. Required reading for anyone who is trying to figure out where Gannon/Guckert fits into the bigger picture.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at February 25, 2005 10:07 AM | Permalink

Prof. Rosen, To be quite honest I'm not particularly sympathetic to your viewpoint on this subject or at least my perception thereof. I am curious however as to the charge that's been bandied about as to Mr. Gannon being a "fake" journalist. If I may be so bold as to ask what exactly in your expert opinion constitutes a legitimate journalist? Is there some certification process similar to the bar examination which attorneys take or medical boards that doctors must pass?

Posted by: MB at February 25, 2005 11:07 AM | Permalink

in response to Corn. the problem with Gannon in the briefing room is not that he is a conservative with obvious biases. the biggest question, which i see some of your readers are getting at here is what does qualify you to be in that room? if Maureen Dowd of the NTY is refused a press pass and she has been covering the White House since 1986 then why does Gannon rate an seat?

the second issue you do not touch on is Gannon's involvement with the Plame scandal. how did he manage to see the documents? who gave them to him?

these are questions that we have yet to have answered. the bloggers will keep digging. hopefully they will find something.

Posted by: juls at February 25, 2005 11:20 AM | Permalink

MB, I must indulge your question:
In reaction to the initial charges of being an imposter, the person resigns, and his organization he's affiliated with doesn't back him up, and then that organization folds... That sounds to me like a plea of nolo contendre. Now that Gannon's website is back up, he is either completely without shame, or his handlers have suggested that he stay in the news and keep running inteference.

But if you were wise, you might look through Rosen's writings to see if he ever said anything like "professionalization is obsolete." That would be an interesting point of inquiry.

For the Plame connection, the researchers on Daily Kos are continuing to look into this at Propagannon.

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 25, 2005 12:46 PM | Permalink

Jon, I appreciate you comments. Admittedly I haven't followed the Gannon affair all that closely. My question to Prof. Rosen was instigated in that I've read or heard the term "fake" journalist applied to Mr. Gannon (or whatever his real name is) about a half-dozen times in times in the past two days. It may in fact be true but I'm not entirely clear who qualifies as a legitimate journalist and who doesn't. Now if Mr. Gannon was simply accused of practicing fradulent (ala Jayson Blair or other recent examples) or otherwise sub-standard journalism then I've no argument with that. As far as Mr. Gannon's resignation I could just as easily attribute that to the seamier details of the story (gay websites, male prostitution, etc.).

Posted by: MB at February 25, 2005 2:45 PM | Permalink

Good things come to those who wait. While the rest of the MSM and the bloggers have been tracking Gannon/Guckert's rise and fall and rise again, at least in blog form. See, http://www.jeffgannon.com. PressThink puts it in context and considers its deeper meanings.

I agree that the affair it is of a piece with the overall contempt for the press exhibited by the Bush Administration. Gannon/Guckert was another in a series of "can't lose" political ploys aimed at multiple targets. Rove is a deep, multi-level thinker, a supreme and cynical operative who figures first how a tactic will break out, then how the opposition response to the tactic will play, and then finally, how the coverage of the back-and-forth will play. So he prefers to set the entire agenda. Gannon/Guckert fires first at Democrats, and then the ensuing stink-bomb contaminates the entire press corps. The starting premise is not merely to decertify the press; it is also to discredit it. Gannon/Guckert's very presence in the midst of legitimate journalists underscores the Administration's ultimate point -- that every journalist is a closeted Gannon/Guckert.

Never mind the fact that he was a fraud and a Republican plant. In the Rove universe a lie is a good thing if it reveals a hidden truth about an enemy. The righteous indignation from MSM is received as a manifestation of inherent liberal bias, and MSM's self-loathing, preening nature. Look at how they carry on so. And its cruder than that. The falsity and fraud at the heart of the Gannon/Guckert matter, doesn't matter. The Swift Boat Veterans didn't need to be credible to serve their purpose. The issue wasn't their veracity, the issue was some vague, unarticulated "sense of unease" about Kerry. Kerry presented a rational front to the world that collided with the character drawn in the Republican script. So the Swift Boat distortions, while false in an objective sense, actually revealed Kerry's "true" nature. In that weird false-light, Kerry conformed. Maybe Gannon/Guckert's cotton-ball lobs to the Administration were over the top, but wasn't he just doing what "they" all do, albeit without the professionally-trained ability to conceal bias? While PressThink may subject this affair to some serious and thoughtful debate, in the talkradio echo-chambers, the "debate" has already mutated back toward the usual state of liberal bias in the press.

Gannon/Guckert served a purpose, in that he held up a mirror to the MSM's hypocrisy. Rubbish. Hogwash. But such slop has become a staple of the American diet, and there is a growing market for it. And that is the real root of the rot in MSM. In its consolidated, stock-price driven form, MSM must pursue Fox's ratings, even if that means eating their own, or letting the Gannon/Guckerts in. It is hard to imagine a legitimate American news editor anywhere who could stomach a Gannon/Guckert. But its equally hard to imagine an American News VP anywhere who wouldn't quake at the thought of being frozen out by the Bush Administration, or being boycotted by conservatives. The signs of this MSM trailing after the Fox Market are too numerous to mention. Look at Brian Williams' somber tone and message in the NBC Nightly News commercials, which might have come directly from Frank Luntz's Playbook: "We get half an hour a night in our business and our obligation is to answer a critical question coming right out of the box: Is my world safe? Is my family safe? Is my nation safe?" I dunno Brian, maybe we better ask Bush.

Jay has identified a real problem for MSM, but is there any will to do more than discuss it?

Posted by: Mark J. McPherson at February 25, 2005 4:30 PM | Permalink

My question is, why has elite media been happy accepting whatever the WH has been dishing out until now? Look at transcripts of the Clinton era and you will see many Gannons, some representing major media outlets. Why has the press decided they will die on this hill when this sort of thing has been going on since before GWB? PS: I don't think MSM will die on this hill, since history has proven that whenever a spotlight has been shown on the press, the press suffers. The last thing the elite media wants is an investigation of the private/financial dealings of their members. Which is why I'm hoping for a congressional investigation of the entire WH press.

Posted by: paladin at February 25, 2005 5:09 PM | Permalink

There's little difference between this and what the Creel Committee -- including the "Father" of professional journalism, Walter Lippmann, and the "Father" of public relations, Edward Bernays -- did with Woodrow Wilson in nudging America into World War I. Of course, there was no blogosphere back then and certainly no PressThink. The (perceived) righteousness of the event doesn't change the nature of the manipulation.

Posted by: Terry Heaton at February 25, 2005 5:46 PM | Permalink

I just thought I'd answer a few points before I head down to the Big Apple for the weekend. Gotta see those Gates in the park-- before their Gatekeepers tear them down!

to MB:
I'm sorry, imposter is the wrong word. Imposter implies that he actually fooled people that he was doing the job (like Frank Abagnale did). Gannon/Guckert never fooled anyone.

No one has suggested that it requires a "certification board"; To be a reporter is quite simple: Ask questions to learn information. What you've learned, add as value to the stories you tell. This is fundamental to storytelling, whether news or history or fiction. Gannon the "reporter" did neither. He asked questions, not to learn anything, but to smear people, and to try and rattle the other reporters. And much of his reporting did not add any value; he, and the rest of the Talon News organization, copy-and-pasted from White House press releases and from other journalists' work. (see Ron Brynaert's research on this).

So certainly that's "substandard journalism." But what was fake about him was that he wasn't even trying. He skipped right ahead to the big leagues.

to Anna's comment:
Yes, the Nashua Advocate very diligently found an earlier date for the media's awareness of Gannon's fake reporting-- in summer 2003

to Mark's comment:
"Jay has identified a real problem for MSM, but is there any will to do more than discuss it?"

This is Jay's board, and we should celebrate him here, but credit is also due to the people that Jay cites: Dan Froomkin, Dana Milbank, Frank Rich, Eric Boehlart, Ron Suskind, who have been on this beat before. Obviously, what's different about Jay is that PressThink is a bit more interactive. Dan Froomkin could have kickstarted this effort on the Nieman Watchdog sight, but maybe Froomkin/Nieman don't yet have the bloggo Q-factor that Rosen/PressThink does. I think that has to change. There's a bit of a bias towards blog-happy sites and away from efforts that don't meet any of the classic blog definitions.

to paladin's comment:
"Which is why I'm hoping for a congressional investigation of the entire WH press."

Haven't we learned anything from the distributed research efforts of Media Matters and Daily Kos? There's a lot we can do short of getting a Congressional subpoenas. Really all that we (we being armchair citizen-investigators) need is a list of who's who in the White House Press Corps. That's what Eileen was asking for last year-- the famed blog post that only Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post read.

All:
If people can stop using the terms elite press and mainstream media interchangeably; and define them if you use them. When I hear someone complaining about "the mainstream media" it just says to me that they are repeating somebody else's talking points. For example, which does the Wall Street Journal fall in? Peggy Noonan keeps railing on against the MSM, so clearly the WSJ must be elite. But there are other subgroups of the press, after all, that don't come out of Brent Bozell's Media Research Center's playbook. Try these on for size: the corporate media. The Gannett empire. Small town news. The Networks.

Jay:
From the department of all-good-things-should-be-taken-in-moderation. Any chance you can get some apprentices-- I guess they are still called grad students-- to help moderate these discussions? Call them pressthinkers or gatepeekers or something. Flat-threaded discussions such as these need some moderation to answer questions and proactively deal with the loose ends. This one's a favor, on me.

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 25, 2005 6:42 PM | Permalink

Sorry Jon, I have no idea who "Eileen" is, but I do know that two Democrat Congressmen are asking for Guckert/Gannon's personal notes to be presented for their perusal. Who has more power, "Eileen" or US Congressmen? Do I need to ask? As for the definition of MSM, please don't insult us. You know and we know.

Posted by: paladin at February 25, 2005 7:25 PM | Permalink

The little Secret Service agent at the National Constitution Center seems more interested in John Ashcroft's tight USA Patriot Act spin-tour schedule than any constitutional rights when he stops me from following a flock of television reporters heading for a brief presser with the man who could not even beat a corpse.

I'm sure that this reporter, upon meeting Ashcroft, would do a respectful, professional interview, producing a profoundly objective, truly balanced story. After all, he is so open-minded about his subject matter...

Posted by: Foobarista at February 25, 2005 7:40 PM | Permalink

Jay only errs in not going back far enough. There was PressThink back in the Clinton years which in my view presages Bush's revolutionary leap forward. Part of it was the self-conscious "brazen it out" strategy, which was aware of the news cycle and how to make it work for politicians, another part was the use of quasi-journalist operatives like the rather slimy Sid Blumenthal.

This is not to say that Bush's relationship with the press poses no new or interesting questions, but perspective is needed.

The whole process has been evolving for some time.

Posted by: Brian at February 25, 2005 10:36 PM | Permalink

I'm sorry, but I'm missing this. Is there a "there" there? The White House, or G.W. Bush, or Republicans in general have opened communication to their constituents; as anyone can, and others do.

G.W.Bush has already stated his position regarding the machinations conducted in the Press briefing room and "White House briefings", in clear small words.

So, there is a person acting as a reporter not accepted by other reporters. He is gay (apparently,) he is asking softball questions (obviously,) McClellan knows him (at least to the extent of calling him Jeff,) ... all of this leads where?

That the people in the room are offended? That the people not in the room are offended? That the public dialog suffers? (If so, how?) That people in the room should have some formal vetting process? (If so, who gets to decide the criteria?)

Maybe this is a Karl Rove operation: It seems to distract, but does not seem to lead anywhere that I can discern.

Posted by: John Lynch at February 25, 2005 10:52 PM | Permalink

As a historian, I can confidently say this isn't a new story. All recent presidents have felt the need to paddle on the edge of the press-stream, closer to where ordinary people live and think. All recent presidents have sought direct contact with the American voter and citizen. All recent presidents have wanted unmediated communication.

Rather than interpret this presidential desire for unmediated communication as a negative development, why not ask yourselves why this is happening. Why do presidents and other elected officials want to talk directly to ordinary people? Why do they want to bypass the prestige media?

If your response to this question assumes elected officials will seek to obscure and distort – to “spin,” in your jargon -- then you probably believe the prestige media is needed to uncover and contextualize presidential language. However, if you believe that presidential motives are more benign, perhaps benevolent, that presidents desire to communicate and not distort, then uncovering and contextualizing is not necessary. If presidents are thought of as trustworthy, direct communication between a president and the American people avoids interpretative distortions by the media.

Similarly, if you assume the media seeks to distort and obscure – to spin the presidential message to fit a unconscious, or conscious political point of view – then you probably want the president to speak directly to the people and avoid media distortion. However, if you believe that media’s motives are benign and perhaps benevolent, that the prestige media earnestly seeks to communicate and not distort, then what the media brings to presidential messages will only enhance their meaning, providing context and clarity. In this case, bypassing the media through direct communication isn’t necessary.

Lets take this one step further, toward the recipients of communication, the American people. If you assume that ordinary people will misconstrue news that is not mediated or interpreted, then unfiltered communication between a president and ordinary Americans is necessarily a bad thing.

But if you assume that ordinary people can adequately understand presidential rhetoric and intent, then direct communication between a president and the people is a good thing.

Perhaps the Gannon saga boils down to the media's collective, average opinion of ordinary Americans. Perhaps it is not a story about de-legitimizing the press as much as it is a story about re-legitimizing ordinary Americans. Furthermore, perhaps it is a story about the media’s opinion of its own, and presidential, motives.

Just a few thoughts from an outsider to your media world.

Kris

Posted by: Kris at February 25, 2005 10:53 PM | Permalink

This will interest only a few of the heartier users. I put it together for myself as I begin to collect threads for the Book. A brief sketch, with links, of PressThink's earlier attempts to piece together the Bush White House's strategy of de-certifying the national press corps, beginning in fall of 2003

It started, as I said in my post, with John Ashcroft: National Explainer. (September 16, 2003, shortly after PressThink's debut.) Why Karen Ryan Deserved What She Got (March 31, 2004) was my second look at the Bush Administration's assault on the practice of journalism-- the impersonation of a reporter by PR woman Ryan.

In a follow up, Flacks Cannot Say They're "Reporting" Anymore, (April 20, 2004) I told of pressuring the Public Relations Society of America to either declare what Ryan did wrong, or say out loud that they wouldn't. (They did, meekly.)

My first look at the Bush Thesis, which I consider an imaginative leap in press relations, was A Prime Time News Conference Before a Special Interest: Make Sense to You? (April 13, 2004) I was asking: if Bush meant what he said about "just another special interest," why would he call a press conference at a rocky moment? That led to Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That."(April 25, 2004) where I explained the Bush Thesis, and the de-certification impulse, in more depth.

I also learned something from the reactions. Many on the cultural right cheered my report on the Bush Thesis. They saw it as just, and just what was needed. They loved it that Bush stood up to journalists. (You represent the American public? I don't think so.) For a time, Bush to Press was PressThink's most heavily read post. The put down made sense to them. They saw no problem with it.

That reaction was one thing that led to There's Signal in That Noise: The White House, the Reality Principle and the Press (June 23, 2004): "Not engaging with opponents' arguments, not permitting discordant voices a hearing, not giving facts on the ground their proper weight, not admitting mistakes-- all are of a piece with not letting the 'liberal media' cloud your thinking. This is the Bush way. And disengaging from the press has been a striking innovation of this White House."

I examined the cultural front and the Right's complaints with the press in Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes (Oct. 4, 2004), which tried to distinguish between those "frustrated and angry with the traditional news media," who want changes in the institution, and another group, "posing as critics of bias," who simply want to discredit and destroy it.

On. October 28, 2004, I was quoted by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times, "I think there's a campaign under way to totally politicize journalism and totally politicize press criticism... It's really an attack not just on the liberal media or press bias, it's an attack on professionalism itself, on the idea that there could be disinterested reporters."

In The Coming Apart of An Ordered World: Bloggers Notebook, Election Eve (Oct. 31, 2004) I told of getting phone calls from editors alarmed about the coordinated attacks they were feeling as the election drew closer. I also nominated Ron Suskind's New York Times magazine article, "Without a Doubt" for campaign piece of the year-- a heroic effort to describe the "leap" in thinking that the Bush team has made.

Then on the day after the 2004 election I wrote Are We Headed for an Opposition Press? "The Bush White House has the national press in a box. As with so many other situations, they have changed the world and allowed the language of the old world to keep running while exploring unchallenged the fact of the new. The old world was the Fourth Estate, and the watchdog role of the press, the magic of the White House press conference. It was a feeling that, though locked in struggle much of the time, journalists and presidents needed each other. Although it was never put this way, they glamourized Washington politics together, and this helped both.

"In Bushworld, all is different."

Now the trail has led to Jeff Gannon, and In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press. As far as I'm concerned, it is all one story. But I do not pretend to understand it yet.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 25, 2005 11:09 PM | Permalink

Jay,

I've seen, and in many cases participated in, the threads you reference. To me, it seems consistent. The president has stated that dialogue does not require any particular fixed mechanism. In particular, he states that the formal "press briefings" are using assumptions that he does not accept. If any particular forum does not work for him (or anyone else) there are enough other mechanisms to maintain dialogue. The one discordant note in the threads you reference is the one on

"Not engaging with opponents' arguments, not permitting discordant voices a hearing, not giving facts on the ground their proper weight, not admitting mistakes-- all are of a piece with not letting the 'liberal media' cloud your thinking. This is the Bush way. And disengaging from the press has been a striking innovation of this White House."

To discard a particular mechanism is not the same as ignoring discordant voices. Although the voices in the discarded mechanism may perceive it that way.

Posted by: John Lynch at February 25, 2005 11:26 PM | Permalink

I think some transparency as to who's who in the press room is probably a good idea, Jon.

Your phrase public/advocacy journalism shows me you do have scant feeling for the thing you are either salvaging, or writing off or asking me to put out of its misery or.... I cannot relate to it, and frankly I have no idea what your question is about.

The proposals, projects, arguments and ideas that came together under the heading of public journalism in the 1990s do not need salvaging; they do not have to be justified all over again. They are in the historical record, and in the minds of the people who were influenced by public journalism. I wrote a book intended to capture them.

Mike Phillips, for example, editorial development director for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, whose letter I published a few days ago, is a person who was involved. Public journalism failed (to decisively change the press) but it did not fail with Mike Phillips and now he oversees 21 newsrooms and can influence them all.

I don't argue with people about "advocacy journalism" anymore. I did it for 10 years and no one learned a thing. If a team took a serious look at it now--the public journalism movement, its people, their key ideas--I believe they would find that it anticipated a lot of what is happening today with citizen journalism, that it was attuned earlier than the rest of the profession to the dangers of the disconnect between Americans and their press, that it focused far too much on the limited possibilities for changing mainstream newsrooms, and was, in fact, too timid in its demands, even though it was denounced for overturning all that was safe and good in American journalism.

Plus, public journalism completely missed the Internet. Born too early. When people tell me public journalism (civic journalism) failed I tend to agree with them. But it got way, way further than most ideas for changing the press ever do.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 25, 2005 11:46 PM | Permalink

Kris: Whomever you are, that was a good reminder of what it means to keep an open mind. I like your more detached perspective.

John Lynch: I think you and I have fundamentally different reads on the Bush presidency and what it is about. Given that, we're not going to see the same thing when we look at a Gannon.

I believe you can make an argument for the necessity of Bush shifting strategies with members of the press, and deciding to close their shown down, and bring the presidency into a post-press era. I would not be making them, but they can be made. But then you would be describing the moves of a political innovator, which is what I believe George W. is in this area.

Telling me nothing's different is just a lot of noise. Goes back further than Bush? Yes, Brian. There was a lot of shifting around during the Clinton years. It's still plenty valid to tell a Bush story about the changing fortunes of the big time political press.

But in the end, it's just one story. I don't think it's exclusively correct. I do think it's worth putting puzzle pieces together.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 26, 2005 12:08 AM | Permalink

James Guckert was a fake journalist -- but he was (and as far as we know still is) a real prostitute

This very salient fact hasn't been discussed by anyone in here as yet. Alleged "liberals" like David Corn are avoiding it like the plague. But facts, as Ronald Reagan so memorably noted are "stupid things." And the "stupid fact" du jour concerns an administration that has expended enormous amounts of time and money to oppose same-sex marriage and prevent Buster Bunny from coming into casual contact with lesbian couples. Yet this same administration has no qualms whatsoever ABOUT putting a male whore in the white house press room !

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 12:11 AM | Permalink

I completely disagree with this article. Btw, I am not a journalist. I think Bush and his administration can answer questions of whoever they like. The media are the ones that have put themselves in this position, by their constant refusal to present straight information.

Why should Bush et al cater to people who are going to attack him and misrepresent him right off the bat? They want to get information out the way they want it and they have a right to do that, indeed an obligation to do so with voters like me. You can still talk about the Patriot Act all you want, indeed you are here. You can watch it on local TV and read and report your opinions, and take it apart then.

After watching Helen Thomas scream left wing propaganda in the WH press room for thirty years, and seeing Bush attacked so severely since before he came in office, it is hard to have much sympathy for this conversation. The reason you guys are being cut out is right here in this thread, all these assumptions and biases. The best evidence, for example, shows that McClellan didn't have anything to do with allowing Gannon into the WH press room. Indeed, he was there under Arie Fleischer. The head of the WH press association said as much, that these passes happen at a much lower level and are regularly given out to a lot of "coconuts". Writers here assume that the WH is doing something crooked. Most normal people fail to see what that is.

This combined with no one in the press complaining about the fact that Hillary Clinton has done the same, refusing to talk to reporters for years now, where is the outrage about that?

And did you know Gannon was gay? Shock gasp gasp!!! Gay gay gay gay, and he was in the WH? Oh my God how can that happen.

Reporters are turning into used car salesman, and all you need to know about why is to read this thread.

Posted by: napablogger at February 26, 2005 3:42 AM | Permalink

As far as I'm concerned, it is all one story. But I do not pretend to understand it yet.

Of course its all one story --- and its a story in which the "Jay Rosens" and of the world play a leading role. One notices that the words "Eason Jordan" are missing from Rosen's discussion of how the White House and its operatives are attempting to delegitimize the press. Nor are the words "Sarah Boxer" found therein.

Yet Rosen played a leading role in the controversies over both journalists by acting as the conduit between the "wingnuts" and the "mainstream media" in blowing up complete non-stories into topics of legitimate discussion.

Yet now he complains about how the White House is treating the "legitimate press" as if it doesn't matter.

Gannon and Rosen have one thing in common---ego plays an extremely significant role in what they "publish". It doesn't matter if the story is "legitimate" or not, all that matters is that the story get noticed. How else to explain Rosen's pleasure with being nominated for "best blog" in a group that includes "Powerline" and "Hugh Hewitt" and "Low Culture."

I mean, is this what Rosen is aspiring to in his blog? To turn his media observation blog into the meaningless drivel that emanates from the keyboards of dirtballs like "Hindrocket" and Hewitt, or the snarkfest that is "Low Culture?"

Personally, given the standards to which Rosen supposedly aspires, I'd think he'd be embarrassed to be in this group. But like I said, what Gannon and Rosen have in common is ego and self-promotion above all else.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at February 26, 2005 8:12 AM | Permalink

"And did you know Gannon was gay? Shock gasp gasp!!! Gay gay gay gay, and he was in the WH? Oh my God how can that happen."

Surely Media Mastermind Karl Rove has the answer.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 9:47 AM | Permalink

Jay,
I deeply appreciate your efforts here to frame the Gannon story in relation to some of the larger issues at stake: how the press is not only part of the story, but reflecting on how press codes must change when decertification of the press has been incorporated as a core belief of Bush-era Republicanism.

We have to recognize decertification as an ongoing, and quite advanced process, before we can begin to come to terms with its consequences. Bush Republicans clearly see it as the welcome removal of an opposition filter. Others tend to experience it as the removal of the last shreds of accountability in an already fatally weakened democratic process, as tantamount to rejecting transparency and accountability as core social values, a pseudo-populist demand for authoritarianism.

I used to be quite frustrated in the manner of p.lukasiak in your apparent refusal to call a spade a spade in manners such as these. But I have recently developed more sympathy for your situation. You teach journalism, after all.

Regardless of how the country may go politically, regardless of who triumphs over the next several years, assuming anything beyond disinfotainment survives, our society and our leaders will always have a need for accurate and responsible sources of information about the world around us.

Calling out PR fascists for what they are and tracing their systematic integration into the media infrastructure ala FOX and Sinclair is VERY important, but there are others who do it, such as Thom Hartmann (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1220-20.htm), Tom Engelhardt, and Juan Cole. It MUST be done even more effectively and widely than it has been done so far, but it is also not the ONLY job to be done.

Your work and your blog doggedly stay with the question of how can we do better reporting given the new technological platforms and developing ideological landscape at hand, how can we do this job better and how should we be reconceptualizing this job (or avocation, as some of the long tail models seem to be pushing for)?

We are all challenged when we become implicated in the story we want to report. The discourse of public journalism did have the merit of explicitly facing this challenge in its own preliminary way. It seems to leave us with the same problem that vexes all of these debates: Who are "we"? And who gets to decide? And under what rules will we be forced to make that decision? To what degree does media structure need to be accounted for in the rule-making process? What is the status of individual personal rights vis-a-vis the superhuman corporate version of "human rights" we are all now forced to compete with?

Thanks for your continued effort to continue making sense and to continue trying to communicate in the face of the noise. Even when you don't always take it where I'd prefer you would, you are still making a serious contribution to clarifying the stark challenges that face us all.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at February 26, 2005 1:22 PM | Permalink

A response for napablogger:

As any number of observers, from George Orwell 60 years ago to I.F Stone 40 years ago, have noted, all governments lie. They fudge and omit. They bury and muffle inconvenient facts. They do this repeatedly, relentlessly, shamelessly. And complicit in those lies are members of the press who respond by acting as obedient transcribers.

And so we end up with a press fearful, as Todd Gitlin has put it, of "detailing the anatomy of official distortion" because they're wary of angering partisans already suspicious of bias.

So what are we left with ? An obsequious stenography that plays into the hands of liars and obfuscators of all stripes -- and that is true no matter who is president.

Thus do reporters turn themselves into parrots of the talking points of the day, unwilling to "undo the folded lie," as W.H. Auden put it, rendered impotent by the outmoded tradition of journalism-as-transcription to confront what Walt Whitman called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons."

And that was before the parody figure "Jeff/Jim Gannon/Guckert" appeared on the scene -- a farce within a farce within a farce.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at February 26, 2005 2:24 PM | Permalink

napablogger,
Guckert is a gay-bashing gay Republican political and sexual prostitute, to be accurate.

It's Bush's support for prostitution of the US government and the media that is revealed here. And the close ties of the band of gay-hating gay Republican brothers to that project. And clearly many Republicans love them for it, as long as they hate anyone like their gay selves. What's not to like in a fellow gay-basher? Don't ask, don't tell. Hey, didn't you guys have a problem with that during the Clinton administration?

The prostitution part is just truth in political advertising. And just to refresh your memory, prostitution is not a sexual orientation or a private preference, it is a profession which involved advertising. Bloggers exposed Guckert's own ad campaign! What privacy does ad copy call for exactly?

"More political prostitutes in the White House Press Room, pronto!" That is your message and your proud of it?

Posted by: Mark Anderson at February 26, 2005 3:14 PM | Permalink

I think this is a necessary evil for those whose "beat" is the White House. What is needed is to allow the White House press corps to be stenographers (indeed, the major news organizations should give the job of reporting on WH pronouncements to interns!) but ensure that the truth is provided even more prominence.

In other words, let Candy Crowley journalistically fellate Bush/Cheney....but make sure that Wolf Blitzer always follows her with "For another perspective on this issue, we take you to....."

Posted by: p.lukasiak at February 26, 2005 4:57 PM | Permalink

Is Candy Crowley turning tricks on the side too?

Somehow I doubt it.

And were that the case would the rest of the media retreat from the story in a show of decorous tastefulness?

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 5:49 PM | Permalink

To Steve: thanks for your comments. My problem is that the press lies too, so who is to sort it out? The readers will have to. That is why I think it is ok to have Bush present things the way he wants to, and the press of course is doing the same. The press has become a player, not an objective arbiter. Also, I think yours and Orwell's, Gitlin, etc. view is far too cynical. Most of the time the politicians and the press do not lie, and when they do most of that is not outright lying, it is bias, or spin.

To me what has happened is that the press, starting about with Nixon, has gone from being a watch dog to an attack dog. It really ramped up with Clinton, then with Bush it has just exploded.

I think the discussion really needs to be about, how can the press be more responsible for itself? I mean, I read Howell Raines article in the Atlantic Monthly, and the guy seemed so out of touch with reality it amazed me. He was such an overbearing liberal who thought nothing of imposing his own extremist views on the NY Times news it was amazing. Yet nowhere did I see mainstream journalists criticizing him for that bias. Everyone sort of supported the idea that it was his personality that got him fired, and that Jason Blair was not about bias blindness.

It reminded me of the way male chauvinists used to say derogatory things about women, like asking a woman who got raped what she was wearing, then being shocked that anyone would think it was an inappropriate question. Clueless.

That is the way that most of the press and some people on this thread seem to me, so elitist and out of touch, unconscious.

I think it is ridiculous to say people can't get the information they want, it is all over the place. Also to name Fox and Sinclair like they are controlling the whole world is so over the top. Their numbers don't compare to the networks, or where most people get their news that care to read, from their local papers. They are an alternative point of view that is in a small minority of the overall sources of information.

I don't think much of Gannon, but I don't think much of Helen Thomas, or Howell Raines or Bill Keller either. Sarah McClendon sat in there and asked Clinton about Mena all the time. If we are going to start evaluating reporters by whether they have ever been gay, used drugs, were prositutes, etc, then you have to investigate everyone. Is that the standard now?

What matters is what kind of job are they doing, and Gannon is no worse than a lot of them. I thought Gannon's questions were fine, I do think the Democrats are divorced from reality in a lot of cases, it is a heck of a lot more pertinent than listening to Christiane Amanpour lecture us on how awful we Americans all are.

Posted by: napablogger at February 26, 2005 6:21 PM | Permalink

Mark Anderson, Barney Frank had a gay prostitution ring out of his own house. No big deal I guess. Byrd used to be KKK.

All the people screaming about Gannon being a gay prostitute are liberals. It really has nothing to do with whether he is a good reporter or not, although I admit it is sleazy. But so is Barney Frank and Robert Byrd as far as I am concerned.

None of that is fair in evaluating whether or not Gannon is a good reporter, and for liberals to leap on this so strongly as they have does not seem like anything other than opportunistic Republican bashing.

It is totally unrelated to what this site is calling "decertification" of the press by Bush. To call it that is another term of propaganda, to slightly exaggerate what Bush is doing in order to push a point of view. Isn't that an attempt by Rosen to "decertify" Bush's view toward the press?

One could go round and round with this, I suppose, but my point is that the question is, is it ok for Bush administration officials to answer questions of whomever they like? To me it seems like if Bush didn't do that he would drown and never get anything done. If Hillary did that she could just write off ever being President because all she would get are questions about all the scandals she has been involved in.

I think what a press site like this ought to be focused on is not how martyred everyone feels by Bush, but on how the press could be more responsible about themselves.

Posted by: napablogger at February 26, 2005 6:34 PM | Permalink

"All the people screaming about Gannon being a gay prostitute are liberals. "

And of course in your throughly corrpt and mendacious world view liberals have no right to speak about anything.

"It really has nothing to do with whether he is a good reporter or not, although I admit it is sleazy. But so is Barney Frank and Robert Byrd as far as I am concerned."

And we all know what happened with Barney Frank, don't we? That was scarcely covered up by the supposedly "liberal medai." Likewise Robert Byrd's reactionary and racist past is part of the public record.

It's his liberal present thatlower life-forms such as yourself with to keep from being discussed.

"None of that is fair in evaluating whether or not Gannon is a good reporter, and for liberals to leap on this so strongly as they have does not seem like anything other than opportunistic Republican bashing."

Why resist the opportunity to kick a pack of scumbags when they're down?

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 6:51 PM | Permalink

I think Bush defenders are caught between minimizing what I have called "de-certification," typically by saying there's nothing new here, or it's not happening, just your imagination... and, in a different kind of response, explaining why de-certification ought to happen, why it's just, logical, and appropriate for Bush to have done it to a (biased) press that amounts to an enemy.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 26, 2005 6:56 PM | Permalink

But putting the multi-facted aspect of Gucky's career to one side, Jay, what's always surprised me about this story is the level of insecurity it discloses about BushCo. Today's media is scarcely bereft of reporters and/or pundits more than willing to defend/ promote anything the White Hosue says or does. The problem is that a George Will, Howie Kurtz or Carl Cameron can't produce the kind of readymade "bites" the White House needs to feed its propaganda into the news cycle. That's what Gucky was there for. But his now famous "lost all touch with reality" line was a vast overplaying of the hand. No sooner did these words leave his lips than the cat was out of the bag.

And then all blogistan discovered that said cat wasn't housebroken.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 7:17 PM | Permalink

I didnt know the Executive Branch was answerable to the Press or MSM. I thought all aspects of the Government was answerable and responsible to the People. The MSM does not represent the people but seems to find time enough to bash all things considered conservative or Republican. Why wouldnt the Executive Branch try to distance the itself from the Press with all the shennanigans going on and with the majority of Americans finding the MSM coverage laughable today. As I have stated before here- many conservatives over the years have emancipated themselves somewhat from the MSM. Not just because of its political slant which has been obvious but also shoddy coverage and assinine subjects ie "Women forced to expose themselves to Koko the Gorilla". Who cares? And who cares about Jeff Gannon???? It is such a non-story when juxtaposed to the YEARS of Left Wing bias by the media and their treatment of Repub. Presidents. If there was an outcry of planted reporters or biased reporters being let into Presidential press room by the MSM over the last 30 years or so and exposing liberal reporters for who they are and who they work for and the overlapping people who pays them ie NPR reporters being paid by the UN to write something or another, then maybe the American people would find an interest in Jeff Gannon. As it is, the American people know who is pushing this story and that tells them everything they need to know. And that is the problem the MSM has created for themselves: They have hated and abused us conservatives long enough and now we choose to empower ourselves.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 26, 2005 7:42 PM | Permalink

"They have hated and abused us conservatives long enough and now we choose to empower ourselves."

Ah yes. Leave it to a Conservative to really know how to play the Victim Card

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 7:45 PM | Permalink

Napablogger,
You can't seem to process the GAY-BASHING gay prostitute part of the story. Was Barney Frank campaigning for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage when a gay prostitution ring was traced to his housekeeper? No.

Was Robert Byrd campaigning for the civil rights act when his membership in the KKK was uncovered? Again, no.

Were BushCo. campaigning (for four years) on "family" values, restoring "dignity" to the White House, and gay-bashing when their Texas Republican delivery boy laid one out over the plate with just a little too much contempt for non-salesmen in the room? They sure as hell were.

This is called suffering the consequences of your actions. Republicans are supposed to be for personal responsibility. But actions speak louder than words. In this administration actions typically contradict the words.

Jim Guckert is the gay-bashing gay prostitute in the press corps who personifies this entire administration's hypocrisy. The administration that can't get a fair shake from the spokespeople they've hired to impersonate reporters.

Also, POLITICAL prostitution as well as sexual. That seems to drop out of your thought process. Practice saying it a few times and it will come to you more easily. POLITICAL prostitute Jeff Guckert. Part of the party organization targeting Plame/Wilson, Daschle and Rather. POLITICAL prostitute.

Apparently your answer is that the press brought political prostitution on themselves? They couldn't repeat Republican talking points effectively enough, so the Republicans had to hire "reporters" to get the PR spin right?

Unfiltered news means "all PR, all the time." Your accusation is enough to make reporters proud. Sadly, they don't do nearly so well in fact, hence the repeated references to stenography in this thread. If wanting a press corps that isn't exclusively comprised of Republican salesmen is a liberal viewpoint, sign me up!

Posted by: Mark Anderson at February 26, 2005 7:49 PM | Permalink

Among Bush's many talents he has a sense for who's weak. Rove has more than a sense; he builds strategy (and theory, which informs the strategy) on it. But they come together very well in assessing weakness.

They saw a weak adversary in the White House press, which cannot fight back in most cases without appearing to be drawn into a partisan struggle, a step that instantly erodes its authority and one that mainstream news organizations are extremely reluctant to take.

So, for example, I think the press should boycott the briefing for a day or two, just to protest the emptying out of it, in the answers that are nothing but the refusal to answer phrased another way.

But even this sort of thing--tame, modest, limited, civilized, and just for a day or two--would freak the bosses out. I doubt the elders of the tribe would recommend it. The council of news organizations, if there were such a thing (of course there isn't) would never vote to approve a strike. Too confrontational.

The press is a political eunuch. Its opponents and attackers understand that fully. That is why they have been so successful in their assault.

The briefing was the oxygen of new information-- some information, some reponsiveness, some back and forth. That flow has been reduced to nothing. Basically, the briefing is dead. It was killed, though.

And that was one space where the press had a foothold, made a habitat. It was one place where executive power could be questioned daily-- not went it felt like it. Now there's less of that.

Bit by bit, space by space, you destroy habitat, cut flow, evacuate the ritual. Certainly it is a process that could be completed in a few years, unless there is opposition.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 26, 2005 10:03 PM | Permalink