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Bush Administration to ex-Military Studs: Do Us, and Get a Press Job

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V

videogamer

Banned
Talon News, a conservative company whose Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon is well-known for asking loaded pro-Republican questions at White House press briefings, appears to be more a political organization than a media outlet.

Media Matters for America recently highlighted three Gannon articles that were little more than reprints of Republican and Bush administration releases; Media Matters has also noted Gannon's role as White House press secretary Scott McClellan's lifeline and Talon editor in chief Bobby Eberle's partisan political activities. A more in-depth look at Talon, Gannon, and Eberle casts additional doubt on Talon's claim to be a media outlet and raises questions about whether Gannon should be a credentialed member of the White House press corps.

Eberle is also, as Media Matters has previously noted, president and CEO of GOPUSA, a "conservative news, information, and design company dedicated to promoting conservative ideals." Though Eberle has claimed on the September 13, 2004, edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country that GOPUSA and Talon News are separate companies, they overlap heavily.

In addition to Eberle's dual role as the head of both entities, both domain names TalonNews.com and GOPUSA.com are registered to the same address in Pearland, Texas, which appears to be Eberle's personal residence. The TalonNews.com domain name registration lists Eberle's email address as bobby.eberle@gopusa.com. Articles on TalonNews.com consist of brief introductory paragraphs, followed by a link to "Read more"; clicking on that link takes you to a page that announces, "This story can be found on our #1 client -- GOPUSA!" Readers are then redirected to the GOPUSA.com site.
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280006

Articles where it looks like he majorly plagarized off Republican PR
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280001

Bios gone from the Talon website:
http://mediamatters.org/items/top/200502010006
 
E

explodet

Member
:lol I just caught the story on this.

Called on last week by President Bush at a press conference, Gannon attacked Democratic Senate leaders and called them "divorced from reality." During the presidential campaign, when called on by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Gannon linked Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to Jane Fonda and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush's National Guard service.

Now, the question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon's presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.
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I heard that "divorced from reality" remark on the Daily Show, and it seemed VERY out of place from a press member.

EDIT: He was referred to as "Chip Rightwinginstein of the Bush Agenda Gazette." :lol
http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.jhtml?reposid=/multimedia/tds/headlines/10015.html
 
V

videogamer

Banned
C

Christoff Yurievich

Member
didn't want to make a new thread.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...ouse_friendly_reporter_under_scrutiny?mode=PF
White House-friendly reporter under scrutiny

By Charlie Savage and Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | February 2, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America."

Called on last week by President Bush at a press conference, Gannon attacked Democratic Senate leaders and called them "divorced from reality." During the presidential campaign, when called on by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Gannon linked Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to Jane Fonda and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush's National Guard service.

Now, the question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon's presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.

These include the disclosure that the Education Department secretly paid columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policy and the administration's practice of sending out video press releases about its policies that purport to be "news stories" by fake journalists.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/279556p-239417c.html
Bush press pal quits over gay prostitute link

By Helen Kennedy, New York Daily News

WASHINGTON - A conservative ringer who was given a press pass to the White House and lobbed softball questions at President Bush quit yesterday after left-leaning Internet bloggers discovered possible ties to gay prostitution.

"The voice goes silent," Jeff Gannon wrote on his Web site. "In consideration of the welfare of me and my family, I have decided to return to private life."

Gannon began covering the White House two years ago for an obscure Republican Web site (Talon-News.com). He was known for his friendly questions, including asking Bush at last month's news conference how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

Gannon was also given a classified CIA memo that named agent Valerie Plame, leading to his grilling by the grand jury investigating her outing.

He came under lefty scrutiny after revelations that the administration was paying conservative pundits to talk up Bush's proposals. By examining Internet records, online sleuths at DailyKos.com figured out that his real name was Jim Guckert and he owned various Web sites, including HotMilitaryStud.com, MilitaryEscorts.com and MilitaryEscortsM4M.com.

"The issue here is whether someone with connections to male prostitution was given unfettered access to the White House and copies of internal CIA documents. For a family values administration, that's pretty creepy," said John Aravosis, one of the bloggers chasing the story.

The White House didn't return a call asking how someone using an alias was given daily clearance to enter the White House.

On his TalonNews Web site, Gannon had written that liberals were out to get him because he's a white conservative man who owns a gun, drives a sport-utility vehicle and is a born-again Christian.

Yesterday, however, he abruptly quit, and all of the stories he wrote were erased from the Web site. A great many were on gay issues, including one detailing John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" that was headlined mockingly, "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."
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V

videogamer

Banned
bune duggy said:
didn't want to make a new thread.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...ouse_friendly_reporter_under_scrutiny?mode=PF

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/279556p-239417c.html
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Dude at least post the pics of the research they did on him. It was awesome watching how these people dug into his life bit by bit.

source.jpg
guckalumtotal.jpg
aol.jpg


http://americablog.blogspot.com/ has a great play by play of it.
 
E

explodet

Member
o_o

It's the whole thing combined together - the fake name, the CIA documents, the right-leaning website, the gay prostitution... it's just such a WEIRD story.
 
B

bob_arctor

Tough_Smooth
Hammy said:
Since I'm at lab, I didn't scroll very far down. However, this might just distract the conversation away from the fact that this suspicious character is at the conferences. Then again, if it somehow leads back to the White House... then awesome. AFAIK, "Gannon" was the name he used as a prostitute... and maybe he used some of those connections later on.
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The joke about it is, in order to really cause a stir, we would need to play up the fact that he happens to be homosexual (even moreso than being a prostitute!) rather then the fact that the White House is buying good press in an effort to control popular opinion.

"The Bush Administration, in a very fascist-esque move, pays off certain "press" members in order to dictate the agenda."

"So, the guy's a homo!!???"
 
V

videogamer

Banned
bob_arctor said:
The joke about it is, in order to really cause a stir, we would need to play up the fact that he happens to be homosexual (even moreso than being a prostitute!) rather then the fact that the White House is buying good press in an effort to control popular opinion.

"The Bush Administration, in a very fascist-esque move, pays off certain "press" members in order to dictate the agenda."

"So, the guy's a homo!!???"
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Dude, prostitute (and using a false name) is enough. This shows how porous the White House credentialing is. It might even suggest that he might have had help slipping through the cracks. The fact that he is gay, however, does help annoy and threaten the conservatives a bit, and this may let the left contol this debate.
 
M

Mercury Fred

Banned
My first thought was "which closeted Republican scumbag used to hire this guy as a prostitute and decided to use him as a fake member of the press to lob scripted softballs at Bush?"
 
W

White Man

Member
What has Bill O'Reilly said about this story? I don't have a TV, so I haven't really had a chance to see how the mainstream is handling this.

As far as I know, Matt Drudge has said absolutely nothing about this story.

This is the funniest thing ever, and I certainly hope it ends up being the shitstorm it has the potential to be.
 
V

videogamer

Banned
White Man said:
What has Bill O'Reilly said about this story? I don't have a TV, so I haven't really had a chance to see how the mainstream is handling this.

As far as I know, Matt Drudge has said absolutely nothing about this story.

This is the funniest thing ever, and I certainly hope it ends up being the shitstorm it has the potential to be.
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afaik, O'Reilly has said nothing about it. Hannity did call "Gannon" "a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News". AFAIK, the closest spin I can find is that they are talking about some Nader associate who asks silly questions that doesn't come out of the main opposition party's PR. Also, no one is saying that the Nader associate used a false name and was a former prostitute.
 
D

Dilbert

Member
Although this is superficially funny, this is yet another link in the long chain of blatant manipulations performed by the Bush Administration which hasn't gotten the shitstorm it deserves yet.

How come this isn't a bigger story? How come no one has been charged for paying off that other commentator yet?
 
V

videogamer

Banned
"One of the frustrating parts has been that everyone has been willing to say things and not make the effort to speak with me. ...
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http://209.11.49.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000808726

Bull. The bloggers have been calling his mother for goodness sake. Anyways, just a couple of days ago he said that he wouldn't talk with the press. Now he's going to be on tonight. Yeeaahh. I hope he digs the hole deeper for himself.

BTW. this thread doesn't have enough drama. Maybe some mod can change the title to "Republican Prostitute Lies, lobs softballs at Bush, and has ugly hair". With the recently announced Freeper amnesty period, I would like to see them come in and defend one of their own (yes! he has posted at Free Republic).
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
Hah, "Gannon" is such a fucking joke. He knows he's in deep shit for legitimate reasons and all he can do is say "I don't see it that way" or "ask the White House."
 
V

videogamer

Banned
"Private life " my ass, Guckert. It was your freakin' job. He was advertising his services on the internet, for goodness sake.
 
M

ManDudeChild

Member
That interview .... I want to see the press do that more often to people. Gannon was tripping over himself :lol

Although a stupid comment, anyone think it would ahve been neat if his name was Link Gannon instead?
 
V

videogamer

Banned
A video has been posted:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/ It's first or one of the first items.

He was not only anxious about pushing his story of the day, but seemed to always have some kind of inside knowledge about the White House, as well.

"I said, 'How do you have such great sources?' and he just laughed it off," she told E&P Friday. "Now we all know how."

Farris, who has worked in San Antonio radio for more than a decade, said she came across Guckert first at GOPUSA.com, then later read his work on Talon News, his online home prior to his recent resignation. "I would call [GOPUSA] for people to use on the air and they suggested him when I asked about White House coverage," she recalled. "They called themselves a re-write service. They would take other people's work and put it up on their site." (Among the charges against Guckert was that he often simply rewrote White House press releases as news stories.)

Guckert, she said, frequently passed on what he clearly thought was insider information, during his 12 appearances on KTSA during 2003 and 2004. She first heard from him the expression "shock and awe" to refer to the massive U.S. bombing attack at the start of the Iraq war, and he fingered Mary Mapes as the producer of the so-called "Rathergate" segment on "60 Minutes" before she had seen that mentioned elsewhere.
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http://209.11.49.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000808600
Despite Guckert's non-interview, it seems like he knows more than he's saying.


BTW, props to the witty mod who changed the title
 
P

Pimpwerx

Member
This better get back to the WH. There's no way it can't. Webbloggers exposed this guy for a gigolo in days, and the Secret Service couldn't pick up on this in years? HA! Propaganda! Propaganda! Propaganda! Why hasn't anything stuck yet? PEACE.
 
G

GG-Duo

Member
what the fuck is wrong with the American press.

Why isn't this, and that payola thing a scandal? What the hell.
 
M

Macam

Banned
It's encouraging to see CNN get some of its bite back, however marginal. I liked how Cooper was biting his lip during Gannon's closing comments. Here's to hoping this guy continues to get screwed.
 
F

fallout

Member
GG-Duo said:
what the fuck is wrong with the American press.

Why isn't this, and that payola thing a scandal? What the hell.
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Well, as Ted Hitler once said:

"Rule number one about journalism is: don't talk about journalism.... or maybe that was fight club."
 
The Chosen One

The Chosen One

Member
Ugh, I'll just say it again, why isn't this being picked up by the major news outlets?

The country is screwed. We care more about a President lying about a Blowjob, then an Adminstration that manipulates the media. What the hell is going on.
 
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