Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe
manages a twofer. He combines a "Jeff Gannon, no big deal" story with a "the internet is the root of the media's lack of credibility" story. The title says it all: "Gannon's story left critics tarnished, too"
Yes, I feel so tarnished, Peter Canellos. Really, I need to take a shower.
This piece is chock full of special nuggets of brilliance.
Gannon's odd journey -- which began after he asked a comically flattering question to President Bush at a news conference in January, continued when numerous bloggers attacked him as a Republican operative planted amid the press corps, and took an odd turn when photos of him as a gay prostitute showed up on the Internet -- is a landmark: the first Washington scandal based entirely in cyberspace.
Okay, whatever.
The story's endurance reveals how influential the Washington blogosphere has become, and how it spills over into popular culture. Newspapers, including the Globe, gave the story far more modest coverage, mainly short reports on inside pages. But Web logs continued to harp on it, embedding it in the broader political culture.
[...]
But the Gannon tale also stands as a cautionary tale of the dangers of smoke-and-mirrors journalism in the Internet age.
Look out, bloggers. The Globe is about to caution you.
Despite the sex pictures, the linchpin of the scandal was always the allegation that Bush and/or his press secretary, Scott McClellan, catered to Gannon so that his softball questions would make the president look good. Having Gannon in the press room allowed McClellan to change the subject whenever a mainstream reporter began to bore in with a tough line of questioning, according to the bloggers who promoted the story.
Yes, that was the linchpin. Gannon may have been involved in the Plame scandal. And the TANG forged memos. And he may have been leaked information on the launch of "shock and awe" before the rest of the country got the news. And he had virtually no press credentials. And he was getting access virtually every day...even when he didn't show up. And he may have been banging the press secretary. Or Karl Rove. Or the President. And he was allegedly doing this for free.
But the "linchpin" was the softball questions. Got it. The Globe reporters sure have a nose for a story, eh?
But the allegation was never proven. McClellan argued that he called on questioners in a routine manner, getting to Gannon only after fielding inquiries from larger news outlets in a fairly predictable order. Veteran White House correspondents backed him up. Meanwhile, McClellan maintained that his office did not give Gannon favorable treatment in getting a press pass. Former White House press secretaries from the Clinton administration generally sided with McClellan.
Here is a simple question for Mr. Canellos. Have you or the Boston Globe done the first thing to investigate this story? I suspect not. Callling up Scottie and getting a "no" does not constitute investigative journalism.
At that point, despite the lurid aspects of Gannon's past, most newspapers gave up on the matter as a news story. But many bloggers glided over McClellan's denials, simply asserting that Gannon was a plant intended to help the White House avoid thorny questions.
We "glided" over them? Maybe because the story was so goddamn wacky that Gannon/Guckert's sputtering excuses and Scottie's denials MADE NO SENSE. We "glided" over Scottie's denials like the L.A. police department "glided" over O.J.'s denials. Because the FACTS suggested that Scottie was full of it.
For those predisposed against the administration, Gannon represented a truthful charge against Bush, even if some of the claims about him were not literally true.
By his own admission, the Boston Globe did minimal coverage of this story. What claim is Canellos suggesting isn't true? And on what basis can he make that suggestion? He's gone from saying the allegations are unproven to suggesting they've been disproven.
In many respects, the Gannon scandal followed a similar trajectory as the similarly unproven allegations of the swift boat veterans who claimed that John Kerry had lied about his military service: Newspapers could not verify any of the allegations except one that Kerry himself acknowledged. But the veterans' TV ads nonetheless commanded wide coverage as symbols of Kerry's weaknesses as a presidential candidate.
We've now come to the best part. Can you believe he wrote this? Isn't this amazing? Comparisons to the Swift Boat Liars?
Swift Boat Liars
- never served on Kerry's boat
- allegations unsubstantiated by any documents
- allegations contradicted by accusers' prior statements
- allegations contradicted by Naval documents
- allegations contradicted by everyone who served on Kerry's boat
- accusers given weeks of 24/7 media coverage for weeks despite being repeatedly shown to be liars
Gannongate
- virtually ignored on cable news
- buried in newspapers
- allegations, while not proven, are virtually uninvestigated
- allegations only contradicted by Scottie's denials
Yes, I can see the similar trajectories from here.
Few would argue that the Internet is responsible for all, or even many, of the weaknesses of the Washington journalism culture. But online journalism's ability to transmit loaded anecdotes, images, and symbols to specialty audiences with an ideological hunger for them has helped create a culture in which all news comes with quotation marks around it.
Shorter Canellos: I'm not saying bloggers are responsible for our lost credibility...okay, maybe I am saying that.
This furthers the Internet-fueled perception that all media are untrustworthy, unless they conform to one's exact expectations. The lowered trust and expectations are small but significant legacies of both the pseudojournalism of Jeff Gannon and some of his most intense critics.
This is crap. Mr. Canellos, neither I nor anyone else who reads dKos expect the media to conform to my exact expectations. What I do expect is that the media will investigate stories that I am interested in fully and fairly. Maybe there is an innocent explanation for the bizarre circumstances surrounding a gay prostitute with no journalistic experience infitrating the WH press corps under a fake name. Maybe. But clearly Boston Globe is in no position to draw such a conclusion.
People are turning to the internet because you are not doing your job not because they want sunshine blown up their shorts.
Update [2005-5-18 11:45:30 by space]: Hey, Carol Towarnicky
of the Philadelphia Daily News gets it.
IF A REPORTER who doubled as a gay hooker had visited the Clinton White House nearly 200 times, think it would have made the news?
[...]
And if 39 of those White House visits were mysteriously unrelated to his "reporting" duties, imagine what innuendoes would be issuing forth from Planet Limbaugh. Imagine the organized phone call campaign demanding newspapers and TV stations report the story.
But Gannon/Guckert isn't being unveiled or innuendoed or even blipped on media radar screens, even among liberals.