by Eric Jaffa, Saturday, February 19, 2005

James Guckert, who used the name "Jeff Gannon" in White House Press Briefings and to write for "Talon News," a division of GOPUSA.

What are the chances that a media-whore would turn out to literally be a whore?

That is what happened in the case of James Guckert, a man with practically no journalism experience who got to ask softball questions of George W. Bush.

Questions like, how can you work with the Democrats when they have "divorced themselves from reality?"

James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") attended nearly every White House Press briefing for two years, first with Ari Fleisher, then with Scott McLellan, and repeatedly got to ask questions, including when Bush gave the briefings.

Getting into White House press briefings is ordinarily the peak of a journalist's career. Getting to ask a question is even more precious, with some journalists who have attended the briefings for years never getting to ask a question.

James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") got to ask questions even though his previous professional experience was as a male prostitute.

He didn't work his way up in journalism, but got to jump to a top level of asking questions at White House press briefings.

If a man or woman went from prostitution to earning respect over the course of years as a good journalist, that would be fine, but what happened with James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") is that the Bush Administration let him ask questions because they would be softball questions.

From Frank Rich of the New York Times ("The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'," Feb. 20, 2005):

"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 credentialled 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."

How this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved. "Jeff" has now quit Talon News not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an X-rated $200-per-hour "escort." If Mr. Guckert, the author of Talon News exclusives like "Kerry Could Become First Gay President," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic Republican closet cases, that's not without interest. 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. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

…When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times also views the White House waving in James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") as part of propaganda by the Bush Administration ("Bush's Barberini Faun," Feb. 17, 2005

They paid conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs. Federal agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so local news outlets would run them. As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces Web sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home, but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense." The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in 2004, splurging on P.R. contracts.

Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it.

Bush said in a Jan. 26, 2005 press conference that he was against using taxpayer money to pay journalists in response to a question about Armstrong Williams, and then immediately proceeded to call on James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon.") The latter didn't get taxpayer money, but it's ironic because of the broader propaganda issue.

If anyone could get a White House day-pass time-after-time, then there would be no story here. But in fact, there are a limited number of seats and getting day-pass is difficult.

An editorial in Virginia's "The Augusta Free Press" states, "Several phone calls placed over the course of a two-week period were needed to get us inside" for each time they needed a day pass. ("Our View," Feb. 11, 2005.)

This is about the Bush Administration's abuse of power in admitting reporters for briefings.

James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") is a plagiarist

James Guckert is a plagiarist, based on the similarity between a UPI wire article on Syria ("Bush officials in lockstep on Syria" by Pamela Hess, UPI Pentagon Correspondent, April 14, 2003) and a Talon News article on Syria published the next day ("Syria Warned by Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell" by Jeff Gannon, April 15, 2003.)

Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews discuss this case

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says that admitting James Guckert to White House briefings is "harmless" ("Hardball with Chris Matthews" cable news tv broadcast of Feb. 17, 2005.) He implies that James Guckert being admitted to ask softball questions is no different than when a Democrat attends a Republican politician's townhall meeting in order to ask a tough question.

Chris Matthews disagrees and describes Guckert as a "ringer."

I disagree with Pat Buchanan as well because an experienced journalist should have been using that time to ask serious questions at White House briefings.

James Guckert tells his side to cable new channel CNN's Anderson Cooper

If you want to hear James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") give his side of all this, there is video of him being interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper last week at the blog Crooks and Liars.

Note that James Guckert's denial that he's seen a CIA document concerning Valerie Plame is not consistent with what he's said previously.

Also note that while James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") implies that his working as a male prostitute is irrelevant, that is his professional background, not his personal background.

Furthermore, he didn't establish himself as a journalist in-between working as a prostitute and being admitted to White House press briefings.

Remaining Question

There are more qualified people to ask real questions of Bush, or even to ask softball questions of Bush.

There was a bit on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1970s where Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain would argue during the news-parody "Weekend Update" segment, and then he would ask her, "Who did you sleep with to get this job?"

Who did James Guckert sleep with to get this job?