Unapologetically bourgeois. Proudly intolerant of idiocy.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

"Jeff Gannon" deconstructs the press corps

Well, I was going to do a long series of posts on the implications of all this, but I had too many prior committments, and events are overtaking me. So, this instead.

WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: WHAT IS A REPORTER?

Excerpt:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan On Thursday challenged liberal media activists, who are currently feigning outrage over events surrounding "Jeff Gannon," to examine the definition of reporter in the new century.

"In this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist. It gets into the issue of advocacy journalism," McClellan said.

"Where do you draw the line? There are a number of people who cross that line in the briefing room.

"There are a number of people in that room that express their points of view, and there are people in that room that represent traditional media, they represent talk radio, they're columnists, and they represent online news organizations."

I say:

Some background. The pseudonymous "Jeff Gannon" is reporter for the Talon News Agency, who has been lobbing softballs at Rumsfeld in the press briefings. This pisses off a lot of people on the left. So first they dug up some dirt and outed him as a homosexual. I could comment on the intolerance and hypocrisy of this tactic, but I can't spare the cycles right now. Now they're saying this is a government conspiracy to subvert the news establishment or something.

Kos complains that he's not a legitimate reporter, without making it clear just what he defines as a legitimate reporter. Others are saying Talon is not a legitimate news agency, without offering a definition of just what constitutes a legitimate news agency. Salon and others say this must be a conspiracy - a paid shill - because how else could he have gotten a press pass using a false name?

This pretension that there's such a thing as meaningful journalistic credentials is being exposed by this whole affair. The news establishment have served the public very poorly for a long time now. (That's an Angelfire link, so turn off Javascript.) Also, the traditional outlets, with their centralized control and high cost of entry for publishers, are going obsolete. News reporting is becoming more democratic. Any concerned citizen with an Internet connection can be a reporter nowadays. The old establishment don't much like that. But it's a better deal for the consumer.

And just who was harmed by what he did? Were the public deceived? Perhaps as regards this man's name, but that's not a matter of public concern. Were the public misled or deceived on any other point? No, quite the opposite. These establishment hacks have not been trying to get information for their audience, or even to get at a hidden truth. They've simply been tossing the same loaded questions over and over again, studiously ignoring the replies. That's not questioning. That's hectoring. It's made it hard for the White House to get the other side of the story out. If anything, Jeff Gannon helped correct the balance. Yes, he's biased. Yes, he's a bit over the top. Is he any worse than, say, Helen Thomas or Dan Rather on these accounts? Oh, but he's got the *wrong* bias. It's the double standard, you see. The left belong strongly in free speech - for themselves and for those agree with them. But not for anyone else.

Okay, not how about this conspiracy angle? Was he a White House plant? Given the above, even if you grant this for the sake of argument, that doesn't seem like a bad thing at all. But we don't even know yet if it's true. It seems he got in not by having connections necessarily, but by gaming the system. He got one day passes, that don't require the same background check as a regular pass. Now here comes the connecting lie:

"According to one current member of the White House press corps, Gannon was the only reporter to skirt the rules that way, obtaining daily passes month after month for nearly two years." - Salon

In point of fact, he's *not* the only reporter to have done so.

Excerpt:

Several reporters pointed to Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, who has been attending press events through a daily press pass for several years. Some say he is as partisan as Gannon in his questions, but often with a left-leaning approach. One reporter called him "the ideological flip-side of Gannon."

I say:

These reporters who say Gannon was the only one - were they lying, or simply ignorant? It reflects badly on them either way.

Now a final digression on a related topic: it's all over the news that Eason Jordan is resigning from CNN. That's just as well for CNN, because he was incompetent - mentally incompetent, and was embarrassing the organization. But did he jump or was he pushed? Is this a chilling effect? Was he forced out because of his political views?

Well, if you consider slander a political view, then perhaps yes. But for the record, I never called for him to be forced out. I was happy that he was exposed, because I believe free speech must cut both ways. But him leaving CNN was either his call, or CNN's. Not anyone else's. The freedom to speak includes the freedom of others to rebut. And it includes the freedom to shut up if you can't take the heat.


Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/news.html#20050212

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

you can follow marlowe's regularly scheduled lambasting at
http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=194340
thank you for your patronage,
boxley

3:04 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well auld son, here is some interesting schtuff from our old friend Justin
quote**** The answer: a man called "Jeff Gannon."

Amid the media frenzy over Gannon's journalistic bona fides, or lack of them – and the lurid speculation going on in the left lane of the blogosphere about how a purported male hooker got admitted to White House press briefings before his "Talon News Agency" (a front group created by "GOPUSA") was even created – one has to ask: who cares?

Answer: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for one, the chief prosecutor in an investigation that could rope in several high-ranking administration officials and even lead to the White House itself. And those of us who have been awaiting the come-uppance of this White House, for two, and are ready to get out the popcorn and the chips-and-dip and settle down for a nice long juicy scandal.***end quote
source http://antiwar.com/justin/
well he got cred before he had an org, hmm not even the Clinton's would stand for that unless he was a paid flack
thanx,
boxley
OT what can we do to attract more posters?

7:10 PM

 

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