Keeping Up with Gannongate
Journalists seem to be having a really hard time reporting on the Gannongate Scandal — you know, the one where a GOP operative who used a fake name, while passing himself off as a reporter for what turned out to be a fake news organization, and got day passes and no security background check so he could take the heat off of the White House press secretary and President Bush whenever press corps started to get ornery? Oh yeah, and the reporter, Jeff Gannon, (whose real name is James Guckert) was allegedly working as a prostitute at the same time and advertising his services on web sites in which he was not even wearing his going-to-the-White House suit. Oh, yeah, and then there are the allegations, that he has denied, that Guckert is tied to the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, among other nefarious GOP activities. So anyway, what is strange is not that the mainstream news media are debunking or pooh poohing any of this, its that most major news organization are not reporting on it at all.
Eric Boehlert at Salon is wondering why that is: “On Feb. 17, ‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor Brian Williams introduced a report on controversial White House correspondent James Guckert by informing viewers that the saga was ‘the talk of Washington.’ Nine days later the mysterious tale of an amateur, partisan journalist who slipped into the White House under false pretenses remains the buzz of the Beltway. Yet most mainstream reporters have opted not to cover the story.”
The Los Angeles Times finally took on the story for the first time on Friday. But bloggers who have been following the story, and well, actually doing most of the reporting, were unimpressed, and said so on a new web site — Propagannon: Exposing Government Propaganda, One Gannon at a Time — which was established in order to correct misreporting on the scandal and to promote news that advances the story.
Meanwhile, Guckert’s old outfit, Talon News, has shut down in the face of the scrutiny — but Guckert himself has launched his own blog.
The story that hasn’t really gotten started, seems unlikely to go away.
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