Bush White House Reporter Outed From Pool for Hiding True Identity As Gay Male Prostitute

O.K.,

How does this happen?

If you've ever seen West Wing you've seen an imitation of the White House Press Pool.

That "chummy" group of reporters from all the major news organizations and a few small ones that have managed to go through the U.S. Secret Service and FBI Security checks to get those highly coveted badges that let them into the White House briefing room and other highly secure locations, like Air Force One, on invitation, to ask the questions that get into newspapers and on the nightly news.

Here's one clip that describes Gannongate well.


WorldNetDaily: Sex to go: Call White House press office

Summary, a news blogger let into the White House under a false identity for reportedly two years raises suspicion among liberal bloggers, when he draws attention to himself by asking a really conservative-serving question at a nationally televised news conference asking thousands of people to ask: "Who is this guy?"

Turns out that "This guy" the operator of a conservative web site/blog was not who he said he was and this was an embarrassment to the White House.

Story 2 developed when Blog outraged developed because unlike in the Clinton era, no media outrage occured over this event, that such a security breach could happen.

Follow the links or do a Google News Search yourself for more clips than I show on "Gannon, White House, Blog" or the like. But of the clips that follow, the really funny one is Bill Maher's video clip. OUTSTANDING! I've higlighted that section in red.

From: See No Gannon, Hear No Gannon, Speak No Gannon

See No Gannon, Hear No Gannon, Speak No Gannon By Eric Boehlert Feb 26, 2005, 14:44

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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. Two of the television networks, as well as scores of major metropolitan newspapers around the country, have completely ignored it.

"It's stunning to me that there are questions about the independent press being undermined and the mainstream press doesn't seem that interested in it," says Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary during President Clinton's second term. "People in the mainstream press have shrugged their shoulders and said, 'It's a whole lot of nothing.'"

Ordinarily, revelations that a former male prostitute, using an alias (Jeff Gannon) and working for a phony news organization, was ushered into the White House -- without undergoing a full-blown security background check -- in order to pose softball questions to administration officials would qualify as news by any recent Beltway standard. Yet as of Thursday, ABC News, which produces "Good Morning America," "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings," "Nightline," "This Week," "20/20" and "Primetime Live," has not reported one word about the three-week-running scandal. Neither has CBS News ("The Early Show," "The CBS Evening News," "60 Minutes," "60 Minutes Wednesday" and "Face the Nation"). NBC and its entire family of morning, evening and weekend news programs have addressed the story only three times. Asked about the lack of coverage, spokeswomen for both ABC and CBS said executives were unavailable to discuss their networks' coverage.

Perhaps nobody is surprised that Republican-friendly Fox News has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid covering the Guckert story and the embarrassing questions it raises for the Bush White House. Since the story began to take shape earlier this month, Fox News has filled more than 500 hours of programming. During that span the name "Jeff Gannon" has been uttered just five times on the air, according to a search of the LexisNexis electronic database of television news transcripts. And at no point have the facts surrounding the story been explained to Fox's viewers. (Dependable Republican ally Matt Drudge, who in the past has gleefully trumpeted media scandals, has also been allergic to Gannongate, posting just one link to date on his Web site.)

I find it astonishing that this has not received more coverage!

As Bill Maher put it "If this was the Clinton White House and this story broke, tell me an angry mob with torches would not be involved".

In a hysterical clip with Robin Williams, Leslie Stahl, and Senator Joe Biden (D, Delaware). The details of this story about the male prostitue who called himself Joe Gannon, somehow got himself a press pass, lobbed White House friendly questions to the White House Press Secretary and SOMEHOW reportedly got scoops on several major stories over the last few months despite using a false name, a secret identity, in this era of high security.

The Maher clip is very funny, yet raises very serious questions.

How does this happen?

Very scary to think that anyone could regularly get into the working parts of the White House with a false identity and get past security. Follow the clip below for Maher's funny monalogue and interviews (note: may become unavailable without notice).

Maher, Leslie Stahl, Robin Williams, Joe Biden Video Clip

On the other hand, maybe they were just trying to show respect to a blogger who was regularly publishing. Can we fault them for that? Hmmmn.

CBS News|White House Blogger Controversy

Maher is funnier, but the White House statement raise doubts. Of course, that *is* what it is supposed to do.

On the other hand, I think this conservative opinion goes a bit too far. Do you?

CBS News|Gannon-Gucker Gate

Is someone a phony journalist, just because their news outlet is a blog? Note that I don't claim this. I am a writer at this point. Writing is a source of pleasure for me. If I were to switch, I think I would open a new blog for that. At least I would change a header. At least I would declare it. However, the first Amendment certainy does apply to blogs.

I am certainly free to express my own opinion here.

The Maher interview is very funny. Maher makes Stahl & Company lose it over and over again. Robin Williams is of course very funny too.

Well, I'm still blogging. Spring is coming slowly to Chicago. Acadamy Awards tomorrow.

I'm thinking Ray Charles is Remembered a lot. Good news for Mr. Fox. Could not see most of the movies this year, so am not really qualified to guess.

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