The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show' - Frank Rich re: Gannon

[TacticalPeek]

The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Published: February 20, 2005

HE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005. A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.

Let me explain.

On "Countdown," a nightly news hour on MSNBC, the anchor, Keith Olbermann, led off with a classic "Daily Show"-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in Washington. In this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the White House briefing room - from February 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named "Jeff." In most of them, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, says "Go ahead, Jeff," and "Jeff" responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents. In the last clip, "Jeff" is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of Jan. 26. Referring to Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, "Jeff" asks, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

If we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "Jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like Fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power. But as Mr. Olbermann explained, "Jeff Gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "Senior White House Correspondent" like Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than The Onion. Yet the video broadcast by Mr. Olbermann was not fake. "Jeff" was in the real White House, and he did have those exchanges with the real Mr. McClellan and the real Mr. Bush.

"Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert. His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists. Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention. Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."


more
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/arts/20rich.html?adxnnl=1&8hpib=&adxnnlx=1108616618-E7y/rbhtXRWZKxiJ7ZVKpA

[98geoduck]

1. This is disgustingly hilarious! Gannon meets the press!

[paineinthearse]

2. The NY Freekin' Times....Vindication!!!!!

I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[chookie]

3. Good analysis

...of news in Bizarro World.

He noted something that may be shown to be significant -- comparing His Chimperial Majesty's scripted "townhall" meetings with the presence of adoring reporters who performed the same function within the press corps.

Given this adminstration's heavy use of PR firms -- i.e. remember when he hired one of Madison Ave's best to "sell" the American invasion of Iraq to Muslims, as if that was all they had to do to get people to forget about what was really bugging them about it -- I have some suspicions that this was an orchestrated campaign to given an appearance of his Chimperial Highness's infallibility and "unanimous support" -- and thinking the "sheep" would see it and think that was the way "everybody" felt about things, so they better stop thinking differently and get into line....

[Pirate Smile]

4. He focuses on the REAL issue - the White House, not JG/JG

"But it shouldn't distract from the real question - that is, the real news - of how this fake newsman might be connected to a White House propaganda machine that grows curiouser by the day. Though Mr. McClellan told Editor & Publisher magazine that he didn't know until recently that Mr. Guckert was using an alias, Bruce Bartlett, a White House veteran of the Reagan-Bush I era, wrote on the nonpartisan journalism Web site Romenesko, that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." (Otherwise, it would be a rather amazing post-9/11 security breach.)

By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news."

Good - He slams Blitzer's pathetic interview of JG/JG. He is totally browbeating and shaming the "real" media.

Can they be shamed into actually doing their jobs? I doubt it. Please, prove me wrong.

[BuyingThyme]

5. Does the Feb 20 date mean that this will appear in the Sunday paper?

I don't know how it works.

[adigal]

7. Yes, look for it this upcoming Sunday n/t

[Pirate Smile]

8. It will need to be updated by then. I think new details are on the way.

[adigal]

6. Thank you, Frank Rich!!

I love Frank - he is one hell of a watchdog too!

[Catherine Vincent]

9. "The only road back to reality may be to fight fake with fake. "

Thanks to Jon Stewart!!!!!!!!!!

[AlCzervik]

10. I love Frank rich aka "the smear merchant"

i think that what the right calls him.

[TacticalPeek]

11. Guess I'll just put this here - Maureen Dowd on Gannon

edited tipo


It's like someone has handed out the permission slips.



Bush's Barberini Faun
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: February 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon.

How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States?

Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief?

It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?

"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions.

more
http://nytimes.com/2005/02/17/opinion/17dowd.html?hp



:evilgrin:

[EFerrari]

13. Notice, they both have backrounds in drama. Just too good. n/t

[otohara]

12. Ha, Ha, Goes After Leslie Blitzer's Softball So Called Interview

with Jimmy/Jeff. Good for him - Blitzer and CNN are not much better than Gannon these past several years. Talk about reporting word for word from White House press releases.