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.

McClellan said Gannon has not been issued -- nor requested -- a regular "hard
pass" to the White House, and instead has come in for the past two years on
daily passes. Daily passes, he said, may be issued to anyone who writes for an
organization that publishes regularly and who is cleared to enter the building.

He said other reporters and political commentators from lesser-known newsletters
and from across the political spectrum also attend briefings, though he could
not recall any Internet bloggers. McClellan said it is not the White House's
role to decide who is and who is not a real journalist and dismissed any notion
of conspiracy.

Nonetheless, transcripts of White House briefings indicate that McClellan often
calls on Gannon and that the press secretary -- and the president -- have found
relief in a question from Gannon after critical lines of questioning from
mainstream news organizations.

When Bush called on Gannon near the end of his nationally televised Jan. 26 news
conference, he had just been questioned about Williams and the Education
Department funds, an embarrassment to the administration. Gannon's question was
different.

"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy,"
Gannon said. "[Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and
Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of
collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid
and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going
to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem
to have divorced themselves from reality?"

As it turned out, Reid had never talked about soup lines. That was a phrase
attributed to him in satire by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show.

Last year, during the presidential campaign, Gannon's comments could be even
more pointed. In a Feb. 10, 2004, briefing with McClellan, for example, Gannon
rose to deliver the following:

"Since there have been so many questions about what the president was doing over
30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the
National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's
racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops
committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the
White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

David Brock, the former investigative journalist who made his name revealing
aspects of former President Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, said he was
watching last week's press conference on television and the "soup lines"
question sparked his interest because it "struck me as so extremely biased."
Brock asked his media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, to look into
Talon News.

It quickly discovered two things, he said. First, both Talon and the political
organization GOP USA were run by a Texas Republican activist and party delegate
named Bobby Eberle. Second, many of the reports Gannon filed for Talon News
"appeared to be lifted verbatim from various White House and Republican
political committee documents."

Eberle did not return phone calls yesterday, and Gannon declined to comment. He
did reply to Brock's group on his personal blog: "In many cases I have liberally
used the verbiage provided on key aspects of the issue because it is the precise
expression of where the White House stands -- free of any 'spin.' It's the
ultimate in journalistic honesty -- unvarnished and unfiltered. If only others
would be as forthcoming."

-----------------------------------------

Reporter tied to GOP quits over scrutiny

By Alan Wirzbicki and Charlie Savage, Globe Correspondent and Globe Staff | February 10, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Jeff Gannon, the reporter whose GOP connections, lack of
conventional journalistic credentials, and softball questioning of President
Bush raised questions about the White House's decision to grant him access to
news conferences, abruptly quit yesterday after bloggers connected him to
websites apparently devoted to gay sex.

Gannon, who uses a pseudonym, posted a message on his website saying that recent
scrutiny had made it impossible for him to continue covering the White House for
TalonNews.com, a website operated by a Texas Republican Party operative that has
run articles skeptical of what it calls ''the homosexual agenda."

''The voice goes silent," Gannon, whose real name is James Dale Guckert,
wrote. ''Because of the attention being paid to me, I find it is no longer
possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News. In consideration of the
welfare of me and my family, I have decided to return to private life."

Gannon posted the announcement shortly after a group of liberal bloggers posted
reports saying they had connected another of his identities to the registration
records for website domains such as hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescort.com, and
militaryescortm4m.com. The websites are either inactive or shielded by a
password.

Although he would not comment about those reports, Gannon told the Globe
yesterday that it was entirely his decision to resign from Talon, where many of
his reports over the past two years have been criticized for consisting largely
of passages from official press releases reprinted verbatim.

Gannon came under scrutiny after Bush called on him during a rare and nationally
televised news conference two weeks ago. Gannon's question attacked Democrats as
having ''divorced themselves from reality" and repeated an allegation against
Senate minority leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, that turned out to be a
joke by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

The unusual question prompted a wave of attention initially led by David Brock,
the former right-wing investigative journalist who now operates a left-wing
media watchdog group, Media Matters for America.

''We didn't think it was appropriate for a conservative partisan with no
journalism experience asking loaded questions to be included in those
briefings," Brock said.

The scrutiny was later picked up by the bloggers on sites such as DailyKos and
Atrios, which began using public records to look into his private life. Gannon
said that he had been ''stalked" by the bloggers.

Kelly McBride, who teaches media ethics at the Poynter Institute, said the
investigation of Gannon's personal life crossed traditional boundaries and was
characterized by ''mean-spiritedness and snarkiness."

''Those are not tactics you would see practiced in most traditional newsrooms,"
McBride said.

Meanwhile, US Representative Louise Slaughter, Democrat of New York, sent a
letter to the president yesterday seeking an explanation for why Gannon had been
''repeatedly cleared by your staff to join the legitimate White House press
corps."

The White House did not return calls yesterday. Last week, press secretary Scott
McClellan said suggestions that he used Gannon as a lifeline were ''nonsense"
dreamed up by liberal bloggers and that any reporter for a news organization who
passes a background check can get a daily pass to the briefing room.

''I don't think the press secretary should get into the business of being a
media critic or picking and choosing who gets credentials," he said.

Gannon also applied for a congressional press pass but was denied one on the
grounds that Talon did not qualify as a legitimate news service, according to
Jim Drinkard, a USA Today reporter who headed the committee that reviewed the
application.

Gannon said yesterday that he had applied for the background check and White
House daily passes under the name on his driver's license, not his
''professional name." He asserted he got no special consideration.

''The White House decides who gets in," he said. ''They generally go with
established recognizable news services, and Talon had established itself as a
news service."