The press takes a pass (Jeff Gannon)

[sabra]

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http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/11541660.htm

The press takes a pass


IF A REPORTER who doubled as a gay hooker had visited the Clinton White House nearly 200 times, think it would have made the news?

If "Jeff Gannon"/James D. Guckert had been unveiled, so to speak, as a liberal imposter who lobbed softball questions at Clinton administration press briefings, he would be as infamous as Michael Schiavo.

And if 39 of those White House visits were mysteriously unrelated to his "reporting" duties, imagine what innuendoes would be issuing forth from Planet Limbaugh. Imagine the organized phone call campaign demanding newspapers and TV stations report the story.

But Gannon/Guckert isn't being unveiled or innuendoed or even blipped on media radar screens, even among liberals.

Last Sunday was the third time in recent weeks that I came across hyper-informed liberals who have not heard the first thing about Guckert, who used the name "Jeff Gannon" to pose as a newsman from a Web site that was in reality a Republican Party front. Gannon advertised his second job as a male escort on Web sites complete with full frontal photos.

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[rodeodance]

1. shameful of the press for passing--I so tire of this!!

[rodeodance]

2. lets thank her for the editorial--at least she 'gets it" (email below)

With an explosion of media, much of it partisan, the role of actual journalism becomes even more critical. Yet the bright line between news and fair comment on one hand versus manipulation and propaganda on the other has all but disappeared.

Of course, Gannon/Guckert was only the most flamboyant of phony journalists to grace our airwaves in recent months: There are the paid hacks who got government money to laud government programs in their columns; there were the government video news releases made to look like actual TV reports - and which were run on many smaller stations.

Journalists get hopping-mad if CIA agents masquerade as reporters in war zones - it puts them at high risk. Yet these same journalists seem almost blasé at the assault on truth zones every day at the White House, on Capitol Hill and on a TV screen near you.

At a time when the radicals of the right, aided by the White House, seek to eviscerate constitutional protections, the news media have found a curious way to protect the First Amendment: Don't worry that Congress will abridge freedom of the press; The press will do the job of abridging itself all on its own.
Carol Towarnicky is the chief editorial writer of the Daily News.

E-mail [e-mail].

[NightOwwl]

3. Can you imagine the venomous diatribe...

spewing from Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Scarborough, Coulter (those self-described arbiters of moral values) if this had happened in the Clinton White House?

Meanwhile a gay prostitute (who posed as a Marine, no less) seems to have as much access to the White House as the President, and this goes unmentioned. And for god's sake, the fact that he is/was a gay prostitute is a huge part of the story. "Moral values" and "evil homosexuals" are the buzzwords of the right. This guy had pictures of himself pissing in the wind, spread-eagled with a hard-on for crying out loud. Hannity et al would be showing these pictures 24/7 (with the "offending" parts censored, of course) as he ranted about Democrats despicable values and the degenerate homosexuals they hung out with. (Anyone still think Alan Colmes has any say at all in this show?)

I'm begging for scraps now, so I guess I should be grateful the article pointed out Dana Milbank's "nothing to see here, please move along" attitude on Countdown. That was inexusable.

Meanwhile, the silence is deafening.

[pbartch]

4. I don't like signing up to read ON- line news!!

will have to so I can read this philly.com article.