Inside The 'Gannon' Case: How Blogs Broke It Wide Open

Greg Mitchell at E & P gets it just right!!

"For the first time last month, I was able to follow a "blog probe" from the start, and it was amazing to see the resources and skills the larger sites can bring to bear on a single issue or controversy.

...The Jeff Gannon affair has not yet morphed into a full-fledged political scandal, or retreated to the realm of embarrassing footnote, so this may be a good time to pause and reflect. At the center of the controversy: A man with no journalistic (but plenty of sex-site) experience who managed to cover the White House at close range for two years for an obscure online site called Talon News — under an alias — with the avowed aim of simply presenting the administration's case, unfiltered.

Whatever the merits of the uproar over this episode, it has proved extremely instructive for me, making possible my first immersion in the new world of blog-generated controversy."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000818447

" In the blogoshere, it's often asked, "Why can't the mainstream media get to the bottom of these scandals like the blogs sometimes do?" I understand the answer now: No single news outlet has anywhere near the army of workers who toil at the larger blogs. To compete in this regard, Gannett would have to shut down many of its local papers and put their news staffs to work for USA Today. Then USA Today could throw a battalion of reporters at a hot issue — like some blogs now can, and do."


I think that is a cop-out. The corporate media has lost its purpose. Instead it parrots the talking points of an administration run amok in its own delusion.

they actually believe this Woodward myth about Deep Throat for example without having researched it AT ALL. Even journalism depts like Illinois perpetuate the myths.

A few more thoughts about Deep Throat by Bob Harris
www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/07.03.97/scoop-9727.html

>snip

""What's missing is an understanding of Deep Throat, Woodward's garage-lurking source who guided the reporters to some of their biggest leads. If he was just a concerned citizen, great. But if Deep Throat had his own agenda, then he used the Washington Post to shape the story for his own purposes and got away clean.

"I have told Woodward everything I know about the Watergate case, except the Mullen Company's tie to the CIA."--Robert F. Bennett, testifying before House Special Committee on Intelligence, July 2, 1974.

Robert Bennett was the head of Robert R. Mullen and Co., a CIA front headquartered in the very same building as the CIA's Domestic Operations Division. The Mullen Co. did legitimate PR work; it also did PR for other CIA fronts and provided cover abroad for CIA operations. Bennett's most notable employee was Howard Hunt, a former chief of covert actions for the Domestic Operations Division of the CIA.""

>snip

If college journalism students would just ask more probing questions of Woodward maybe MSM wouldn't be able to get away with coup d'etats with lower frequency these days ! The Robert Bennett mentioned above is now SENATOR Robert F. Bennett R-UT; and even Richard Nixon himself speculated that Deep Throat, if he indeed exists, was Bennett (see Citizen Hughes by Michael Drosnin).

"Why can't the mainstream media get to the bottom of these scandals like the blogs sometimes do?" It's not that they need an army of reporters...they just need reporters who can actually conduct research and investigation, rather than parrot White House talking points.

EDIT: Ah, beat me to it, sir.

MSM is involved in the scandals. These top notch reporters are perverts etc just like the REPUKES.

"Hundreds, maybe thousands, of the pajamadeen went to work on the alias angle. A few days later, the popular blogger Atrios suggested that Gannon's real name was James D. Guckert. "

now get this:
"And here's the nut of it: In the blogoshere, it's often asked, "Why can't the mainstream media get to the bottom of these scandals like the blogs sometimes do?" I understand the answer now: No single news outlet has anywhere near the army of workers who toil at the larger blogs. To compete in this regard, Gannett would have to shut down many of its local papers and put their news staffs to work for USA Today. Then USA Today could throw a battalion of reporters at a hot issue — like some blogs now can, and do. "

Gannet--Gannon--Gukert, hmmm...

with large budgets, paid profession staff and Lexus Nexus, can't compete with the pajamadeen? Isn't that a shame.

That must make MSM the 'moolah-hadeen' ?

The MSM's relevancy is withering in front of our eyes.

WE are the truth seekers and tellers now. Onward!

is that most us of do it for free. There is no way they can compete with that.

'tis a beautiful thing.

and Bush goes merrily dancing around Europe. I am still waiting for something of substance to happen. Keith Olberman talking about it is not very substantive. I am waiting for Bush to talk about it under oath in front of a committee. Until that day comes nothing changes.

The seeds are planted ...

What's important is that the power of collaborative journalism, unencumbered by financial tether's is alive and well and living on the internet.

What this story has proven is that we can be a force for truth. We can practice an Open Source journalism where many can contribute, edit, and refine a story...and then have 1000's of entry points to get the story out. We can shine a mighty large spotlight on an issue that even the media cannot ignore.

I think Gannon was just a tune-up to more important stories that the power of the blogosphere can turn it's combined resources upon. Gannon gave blogs credibility in their ability to quickly focus, research, and expose a real story. The corporate mainstream media must be watching the evolution, maybe arrival of it's competition with great nervousness.

I only hope that the bloggers do not get corrupted by advertising $ that could infuence the content of their sites. The model is pretty decentralized, so maybe that's not a concern, yet.

I agree with you on the new possibilities.

built-in 'institutional memory'. This is what I was trying to say eariler. The wetbehindtheears new reporters hired at the MSM spots don't know where to look on some stories...Gannon/Guckert just fell from the skies.

proud to be a member of the "pajamadeen" ;) Love it

have Congress do what it should have done back in the '70s and ban the domestic operations crapola/payola maybe, just maybe, they can all get their lost credibility back...Don't bet on it.

I think his attitude is fairly right, but he seems pretty technologically naive and uninformed, and he gets wrong answers because of that.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of the pajamadeen went to work on the alias angle. and The material the detectives at DailyKos and other blogs drew out of obscure or abandoned Web sites — and caches — regarding Talon, Gannon, and a dozen other threads was astounding, although I couldn't quite tell if any of the searches and grabs bordered on the illegal.

What I remember was a couple "WhoIs" type queries and nothing that remotely bordered on the illegal. Well, nothing the bloggers did. I think he really needs to take the freshman library orientation at a local college some day. It didn't take hundreds or thousands of pajamadeen with obscure, esoteric knowledge and sources. All it took was someone with enough non-sheep genes to ask, "Who is that creep?" and a 15-year-old who's spent some time in a library recently.

The mainstream media slowly came to the story, with the explosion occurring on Feb. 17, two weeks after the first Media Matters mention, although too many outlets have pooh-poohed the story.

So even after someone else asked the obvious question that they wouldn't ask and did all the research work to find out the answers, it still took them two more weeks to report it.

It's not that they don't have armies of researchers. Even after someone else does all the research for them, they still won't report the story.

"Why can't the mainstream media get to the bottom of these scandals like the blogs sometimes do?" I understand the answer now: No single news outlet has anywhere near the army of workers who toil at the larger blogs.

No, he doesn't understand the answer. He has the completely wrong answer. The answer is that the blogs have someone willing to ask questions and then have someone who has a clue about how to do research today. Is there really an army of workers at any of these blogs sites? I seriously doubt it.

To compete in this regard, Gannett would have to shut down many of its local papers and put their news staffs to work for USA Today.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Well, the first part about shutting down their papers. They're not doing journalism so they might as well just shut down.

It's perhaps an indication of his technological non-sophistication that the article doesn't even give an email address to contact him.

gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com

:thumbsup:

The curious credentials of Gannon were first questioned a year earlier. February 18, 2004 http://webdems.blogspot.com.

Would you be surprised to learn that (as White House reporters are browbeaten daily) a seat in the fourth row of the WH briefing room is occupied by a volunteer for a rinky-dink right-wing "news service" whose reporters include a personal trainer, a scout camp director, an aerospace employee, and a high-school student? This volunteer, credentialed by the White House, is a denizen of the barely credible web forum freerepublic.com.

<snip>
Let's take a look at the bogeyman of credentialing practiced by this Bush White House. Let's go back to the fourth-row seat designated for the news service mentioned above -- Talon News Service.

The nine volunteer "reporters" of Talon News Service are available for your inspection at Talon. The roster includes (as mentioned above) a high-school student who cites as favorite reading the fundamentalist Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest; a "reporter" who dutifully lists his work history as "cleaning my family's bar" and sometime camp director; a personal trainer; an aerospace engineer; and a couple of self-proclaimed freelancers.

The Talon reporter assigned to cover the White House is Jeff Gannon, whose product from this plum position is a one-minute daily webcast on Talon's site and a weekly broadcast over the radiofreerepublic.com network. Freerepublic.com is the faded home-base of the Clinton haters; a message board where some dirty tricks against liberals are hatched (the recent bogus photo of Kerry and Fonda originated there) and a whole lot of blind Bush-kissing continues. Freerepublic's shrill, extremist rallies in Washington attract only a handful of people.

Talon News Service is obviously a silly and kooky wannabe outfit. And yet a precious seat in the fourth row of the White House briefing room is Gannon's. He boasts on freerepublic about asking questions designed to elicit "gasps" from the real correspondents.

How and why did Talon gain permission to access White House briefings while the same White House threatened denial of access to correspondents from media giants NBC and CNN and The Washington Post? And doesn't Talon's inclusion cement the critical need for reporters to be credentialed through peer review?

The White House press hasn't always been cowed. It doesn't have to be this way, and there is precedent for another way.

TERRA! TERRA! TERRA! OBL determined to hit USA soon! These transparent motherfuckers. Too bad the MSM and general public swallow every time. I wish trout and tarpon were so fucking gullible.

It seems that MSM and Pharma have something in common.

Pharma cannot tolerate or allow herbal remedies to have any true support because they cannot be patented. The Corporations cannot tolerate anything that threatens their control (and bottom line). Likewise, MSM will not tolerate bloggers for long. They will either co-op bloggers by trying to pay them off or kill their access to wideband internet.

Watch what happens. Corporate Media owns the ISP's now. They can control bandwidth and access if we do not wake up and insure unfiltered access to the internet.

That was on one of his PBS "Now" reports. The number may be half, or it may be larger. I am recalling from memory. Nonetheless, Moyers made a point of how corporations could make a play to control the internet.

For that matter, Viacom could buy Google and start to selectively clean out the caches.

You know, like these.......



Each one of us who participated in a "campaign" would get to wear one on our tin hat.

:grouphug: