The WH newsroom is full of frauds. It will be interesting to see which of the usual WH "journalists" step forward to condem this Bush travesty. And speaking of frauds and travesty,Queen Condi is really doing some saber rattling today. CNN had some armchair general on showing how we can blow up Iran with cruise missiles but warning that unlike Iraq, Iran can fight back. God help us.

Seriously, let's start a letter-writing / boycott campaign aimed at the media companies that broadcast the administration's staged Q&A sessions. MoveOn.org could be a good network/forum for this, and we might actually affect what the media reports, rather than allowing ourselves to be spoonfed lies for lack of good-quality information.

I propose our campaign for better media reporting of administration activities request this:

1) That news shows be able to refer to appearances by Bush and company (either official or "stumping" ones), but not air any part of them unless it is somehow proven to the station or program that they have not screened the audience or planted questions. (Possibly by involving the media in supplying the questions...oh wait, isn't that what is supposed to happen at a "press conference"?) Opinion shows could air whatever they like, but asking that news shows be assured a *representative* audience would also help draw the line between "news" and "commentary" programs. The audience should be representative of those who want to attend, but not necessarily impartial.

2) That any newspaper stories including quotes from administration appearances *with* screened audiences or questions should include the information that the audience was pre-selected by the administration.

Planted questions and audiences selected for loyalty deserve no airtime and no tax-revenues -- they are opinion and propaganda, not news.

Bah, I forgot to mention radio and internet news, but something similar should be requested of them, too. The campaign should be aimed only at true news programs,like the CNN headline news, NBC Nightly News, etc. As to whether the Fox News "news" programs fall into this category, well....

Great post, Steve! I wonder too what the heck the WH press corps does. There probably will be more to this story than we know yet. Who credentialed this guy? Surely, there had to be some kind of illegal crap going on here because Gannon was a false name.

Maybe, all of this will shake the press up. We will ride their butts until they do their job.

In times of old, when journo's were bold, they'd pick up on this little thing called a [voice style="dr. evil"]pa-tern[/voice].

Asshats.

In times of old, when journo's were bold, they'd pick up on this little thing called a [voice style="dr. evil"]pa-tern[/voice].

Asshats, all of 'em.

A few weeks ago I was transcribing bits of Bush's press conference on dailykos.com (a service to cubicle dwellers who can't watch TV during the day). Now I am no expert, but I remember that when Gannon's question came up, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Here is how I transcribed it (a bit abbreviated because I was doing it in real time), with my personnal comment that I made at the time:

Q: Dems painting bleak picture of US economy, on the verge of collapse, but SS is rock solid. How can you work with people who have seemed to divorce themselves from reality. [Who asked this question???]

So it was no surprise when I heard last week who this guy was. It was totally obvious that he was not legitimate. I have no idea why the WH press corps couldn't have figured it out for themselves.

If I were going to be a WH plant, I think I would have used a bit more subtlety.

From the Campaign Extra Blog of Will Bunch, of the Philadelphia Daily News --

"Jeff Gannon" and Karl Rove -- one degree of separation

[Gannon] and Karl Rove seem to share a mentor -- a largely under-the-radar wingnut named Morton Blackwell. It seems that "Jeff" also is a graduate of the the Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism -- a conservative propagandist training school that was founded and is run by Blackwell and that operates on an $8 million annual budget which comes from God knows where. ...

Less well known is that Blackwell -- who was the youngest Barry Goldwater delegate in 1964 -- is also a former national executive director of the College Republicans, who had trained the teen-age Karl Rove to be a "field organizer".

Morton Blackwell's wife founded the VIP -- the Voting Integrity Project. They were implicated in the Florida Voter Purge of 2000 -- which was a Karl Rove scheme.

NPR ATC is doing a piece right now on Gannon (Wednesday 2/9/05 PM) -- they cite the work done on Daily Kos.

I just heard that Bush, Gannon, and Ken Mehlman had a three way!

Okay, I have read the WaPo WH Briefing every day since the Democratic convention and there were times during the summer, Dan Froomkin used to point out the softball questions by Gannon. He would ask "Who is this guy?" and yet no one, in the media OR blogosphere would pick up the story. I just want to give credit where credit is deserved okay?

It's highly doubtful there weren't at least some "reporters" among the WH press corp who knew *exactly* what was going on.

With such a grossly corrupt Fourth Estate, is it any wonder America got stuck with The Chimperor for another four long years?

It also makes me question what the hell was going on under the noses of the White House media pool day in and day out that not one of them asked just who the hell is Jeff Gannon and Talon News anyway.

Bingo Steve.

The media at best is in this is incompetent, at worst complicit.

Herr Goebbels would be proud; George Orwell would be impressed; and the former Stalinist Pravda would say they taught us all we know.
Did you see the new CNN poll that has Bush's approval at 57%? They oversampled Republicans by 9%: 37% Republican, 35% Independents, and 28% Democrats.

Q: What do the new Bush Medicare budget forecast and ex-Talon News reporter Jeff Gannon have in common?

A: They are both frauds exposed on the same day.

For details, see:

"A Banner Day for Republican Fraud"

And in his non-admission/resignation, he said he wanted to "return to private life."

Now, is that what a reporter says when he resigns from his news organization, or what a government hack says when he's falling on his Nerf (tm) sword to retire for three days and shamble back as a lobbyist?