Inevitable Comparisons

Jesse Walker | February 16, 2005

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to equate "Jeff Gannon," late of Talon News, with Russell Mokhiber of the Corporate Crime Reporter. Mokhiber is not, to my knowledge, a gay prostitute, and I don't think anyone's claiming that he's an administration tool, but like Gannon he has a history of offering up ideologically loaded questions during White House briefings. On that ground, Accuracy in Media has finally dragged him into the debate.

I'm someone who thinks more people should be allowed into the White House press corps, not less, with a special effort to recruit tedious ideologues of all colors and sizes. So while I'm interested in the Gannon scandal -- who wouldn't be interested in a tale this salacious? -- I can't work up much outrage over it. I never managed to get myself into a sweat over Eason Jordan either, frankly. Someone should probably revoke my blogger badge.

Comments

|2.16.05 @ 3:29PM|#

I'm all for people asking loaded questions. The more outrageous, the better. Ali G would make a far better reporter than your average suit monkey from the media.

|2.16.05 @ 3:41PM|#

Common Dreams is an actual media outlet. Maybe not "Newsweek," but not some guy with a vanity website, either.

Also, there doesn't appear to be any funny business in Mokhiber's acquisition of his press pass.

Fox News has reporters in press briefings, and I don't recall that ever generating a scandal. Ditto with Helen Thomas.

Mokhiber looks more like Fox or Thomas, and less like Talon - a biased reporter to be sure, but an actual reporter. Also, there's no reason to suspect he blackmailed someone in the White House press office into violating security procedures.

It's silly to pretend this is about biased questions.

Morat|2.16.05 @ 3:48PM|#

I've got to ask if Mokhiber worked for a news site that merely cut and pasted press releases as news? Did his press agency come into being the week before he got his press pass?

Did he get a "one day" pass every day for [i]two years[/i]? Did he get to enter and ask questions under a pseudonym?

Oh, and was he an [i]actual[/i] whore -- instead of just a media one -- up until about the time he took up journalism?

I'm just asking (the last one is there just for funsies. The rest of the questions are the meat of the matter. So to speak.)

Jesse Walker|2.16.05 @ 3:58PM|#

Like I said, Morat, I don't think anyone's claiming Mokhiber is a gay prostitute or an administration tool.

Personally, I think the White House should give press passes to pseudonymous Hit & Run commenters, starting with Jean Bart. The more, the merrier.

|2.16.05 @ 4:03PM|#

You get to recognize the Republican strategery after you see it few times on the internets.

Gannon, a prostitute/pimp with no journalistic credentials somehow (?) gets a press pass under a pseudonymn, and askes biased questions. This creates a shitstorm that splatters the Right.

So a conservative outfit finds a reporter from an actual magazine whose also asks biased questions, and attempt to create a shitstorm.

The New York Times and Washington Post print "On the one hand, on the other hand...here are some quotes from nationally respected journalistic elder statesmen saying the Gannon episode was more serious, here is a quote from a conservative talk show host and an anonymous source saying the Mokhiber episode was more serious. I guess it's all a matter of perspective."

And if they don't, AIM gets to pout about the MSM being horribly biased for a couple months.

Jake|2.16.05 @ 4:33PM|#

So...
A GOP organization sets up a fake news agency ("Talon") and hires a male prostititue as a "Journalist" (you can ask, literally, who did he blow?) that lobs softball questions with to Bush and McClellan...AND is one of 6 journalists someone leaked the Plame memo to outing (hah!) poor Valerie.

And somehow all Jesse can say is "I can't work up much outrage over it. "

It's not about him being gay or a hooker (christ, I'm gay...but not a hooker). It's not about 'biased' questions to the whitehouse.

It's about more press manipulation by the Bush Administration.

And it's not like the GOP hasn't used male escorts before for blackmail:

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/02/mystery_beefcak.php

How many "Troopergate" stories did we have to sift through during the Clinton years?

|2.16.05 @ 4:38PM|#

" with no journalistic credentials"

And it's not like he earned some credibility with an earnest, well-written blog for a year or two before getting his White House pass.

He just popped up out of nowhere. It's quite a leap, that - from the bath house to the white house, in one easy step.

|2.16.05 @ 4:55PM|#

Dan Froomkin gave a nice round-up of a bunch of White House press corps...personalities... just the other day.

I never read a thing she ever wrote and yet I suddenly feel the loss of Naomi Nover.

We really need to embrace the cranks of our press corps more and the shills less. The same is true of our bloggers.

Anon

Jesse Walker|2.16.05 @ 5:15PM|#

It's true, Jake. I can't work up much outrage over the fact that the White House press corps includes a partisan shill, or that someone with few professional credentials could join its hallowed ranks. I've visited the Talon News site a few times over the last year; I thought it was stupid, maybe even contemptible. But who cares if its ace reporter gets to ask Scott McClellan questions?

I initially thought the Plame angle might make this a media-manipulation story, but now that's looking less credible and as a result my interest has waned. If you've seen a solid response to that Just One Minute post, let me know and I'll reevaluate my views. For now, though, this looks more like an entertaining little footnote than a big story. And either way, it's not the sort of thing that gets me "outraged."

(Nor, by the way, do I share the "outrage" of the various sanctimonious warbloggers who are claiming that this is all about homophobia. Today I get to be outrage-free.)

The Lonewacko Blog|2.16.05 @ 5:36PM|#

It's worth pointing out that the Gannon story isn't just about gay porn, or military porn. It's about gay military porn and gay military prostitution, not about porn, gay, military, or normal.

Meanwhile, the issue with Mokhiber isn't that he's biased. It's the hypocrisy. As Lonewacko pointed out, many of these same people who don't think Gannon is a "real" reporter or who pretend to be opposed to ideologically-biased reporters haven't said a peep about Mokhiber. In fact, in the case of ODuhhhhb, he had previously praised Mokhiber.

If Gannon isn't a "real" reporter, is someone who asks basically joke questions a real reporter?

|2.16.05 @ 6:34PM|#

Mokhiber asks some loopy questions, but often he just asks the questions that no one else has the balls or clarity to ask.

The Multinational Monitor and Corporate Crime Reporter are both serious, if not "objective" journalistic endeavors.

|2.16.05 @ 6:50PM|#

I took this story (as I suspect Jesse did) as a snicker more than anything else. It's about the White House having a (visible) booger in its nose rather than about it holding a smoking gun.

These cats always plant questioners, I'd think, and the only reason this story is getting any attention is the irony involved.