Jeff Jarvis, one of the blowhards who regularly goes on about blogging and the revolution in citizen journalism, finally notices the Gannon investigation on his blog today: and lies about it, contemptibly. Full story below the fold.
[Crossposted from Reading A1.]"It seems there are two stories" in the Gannon affair, Jeff ruminates:
1. What the White House did:
The argument on Media Matters and Kos and other sites has been that Gannon is a ringer put in the White House with a fake "news service" called Talon and that he only pitches softball questions and only repeats the official line. If the White House gamed the press corps in that way, that's a story.
2. What bloggers did:
The bloggers went after Gannon personally, first trying to expose his real name and then his sex life. If Gannon is part of a homophobic organization and if he is gay, then that's a story about hypocrisy. But is it a news story? I'm not comfortable with outing as news, for there was a time not long ago enough when revealing someone's homosexuality was a story and a scandal and a crime when it should not have been; to use that sort of attack by innuendo for the other side -- just because it's for the other side -- doesn't make it right. So here, the bloggers end up as the story.
Notice the deft way Jarvis splits this in two pieces. One the one hand we have an "argument" made about Gannon's status as a journalist, and Talon's as a news service; on the other, the investigative work (done largely on Kos), in which "bloggers end up as the story"—not for their citizen journalism, as it happens, but for their questionable behavior in indulging in "attack by [sexual] innuendo." As if the one had nothing really to do with the other.
Notice, too, how quickly that phrase "expose his real name" flits past in Jarvis's account: his sole reference to the fact that "Gannon" was operating under a pseudonym. That's how you know Jarvis isn't just too stupid to get it, that instead he's deliberately distorting the truth. Jarvis is concerned to avoid giving "Gannon's" pseudonymity its proper place in his account, because he wants to obscure from his readers the actual logic of the Kos investigation to this point.
This will be obvious to most Kossacks, but I'll spell it out anyway. "Jeff Gannon" was accredited to the White House under an assumed name. This is not only not the common procedure for accrediting journalists; it appears to be unprecedented. Given "Gannon's" employment with a shady, recently created news organization (with links to the Texas GOP), his written work essentially plagiarizing RNC press releases, his apparently cozy relationship with Scott McClellan in White House press conferences: the fact of his working under a pseudonym suggests that somebody is hiding something, and allows the inference that the something may have to do with Talon News and with the White House press operation. Under these circumstances, any competent—any rational investigator—would follow the pseudonym: would start by trying to recover the identity the false name has masked.
Not two stories, in other words, but one, following an obvious logic: uncover "Jeff Gannon's" real identity as an avenue into the story of a White House intent on crafting the means of, as Jarvis so delicately puts it, "gaming the press corps." (A less delicate way to put it would involve the use of the term "covert propaganda.") Nobody pursuing this story gives a rat's ass about Gannon except as a way in to whatever's being hidden. If he has, in fact, been outed as gay, that's an incidental effect of the pursuit of the real and only story ("collateral damage," a term I'm sure a warblogger like Jarvis is on comfortable terms with). To pretend that making a personal, sexual smear is on anybody's agenda is to utterly, and contemptibly, mischaracterize an extraordinary act of citizen journalism. (Yes, there was a certain surprised, amused reaction when the gay angle emerged, but nobody thinks that angle is anything except a momentary diversion from the actual investigation.)
This logic really can't be that difficult for anyone with a journalism background to understand. I'm sure Jeff Jarvis understands it perfectly well. He just doesn't want his readers to. Oh, and the next time Jarvis starts crowing about blogging and citizenship and all that: well, you know exactly what that's worth.
Anybody feel like heading over to Buzzmachine to do a little truth-squading?