There's A Fourth Estate And A Fifth Estate

King Publishing ^ | 02/23/05 | JOSEPH CURL

[Pikamax]

There's A Fourth Estate And A Fifth Estate BY JOSEPH CURL

James Dale Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, the former White House correspondent for Talon News, set off a firestorm of controversy and introspection last week inside the cramped press work quarters behind the West Wing briefing room.

The unabashedly conservative reporter had already disappeared in a flash of green smoke, drummed out by left-wing bloggers who had set out to expose the personal background of the short, shaved-head man after he asked a particularly right-wing question in a presidential press conference.

The blogospheric probe had gotten ugly—democrats.com charged that Guckert "dabbled in male prostitution rings (through registration of sites like Hotmilitarystud.com [and] Militaryescorts.com," and alleged that "he was bringing male prostitutes into the White House." (Guckert acknowledged registering the gay sites, but said he did so for a client while he was working to set up a Web hosting business in Wilmington, Del. But new pictures that emerged this week tell a different story. Check out http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html.)

Left behind after the smoke cleared were a few fundamental questions: What is a reporter? Does asking biased or loaded questions invalidate a reporter's credentials? Do columnists count? And above all, who gets to decides?

Members of the White House press corps offered some insight last week after Guckert's resignation.

"We all ask all kinds of questions; we all come to the briefing room with different points of view; we all serve different corporate masters," said Terry Moran of ABC News. "I don't know anything about Gannon's—or Guckert's—private life, and frequently he sounded like a shill for the administration. But he also challenged the White House from time to time with pointed questions—from the right. And that always struck me as valuable and necessary."

Moran's point is food for thought. Although Guckert's question to President Bush in the Jan. 26 press conference—about how Bush planned to work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality"—clearly crossed a line, the Talon News reporter occasionally held the president's feet to the fire. Guckert asked questions about GOP discontent over such issues as immigration, pressed the White House on conservative issues and drew out the administration's perspective on Democratic initiatives.

While many White House reporters oppose advocacy journalism in the briefing room, Moran vehemently objected to the course of action that led to Guckert's resignation.

"Whatever the ostensible rationale, it seems clear to me that `Gannon's' personal life was investigated and targeted by some bloggers because they did not like the ideas he expressed in his questions. That is chilling to me," he said.

John Roberts of CBS News agreed that "the liberal blogosphere"—not the White House press corps—drove the onslaught against Gannon. But he also said that Guckert's "presence at the daily briefing was not an issue with me."

"There are other people there with a clear agenda as well," he said.

Judy Keen, the sage White House correspondent for USA Today, closed the loop.

"Gannon—or whatever his name is—certainly isn't the only reporter whose point of view is reflected in their questions. Anyone who regularly attends the gaggles and briefings knows that there are other reporters there whose questions suggest a certain hostility toward the administration," she said.

Regular briefing attendees know that only too well. Helen Thomas, a former reporter turned columnist, despises Bush and once called him "the worst president in all of American history." Her daily rants come from the hard left, including this question during the lead-up to war in Iraq: "The president claims he's compassionate, but he's on the warpath against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, the Philippines, and this new report he would use nuclear weapons whenever he gets the urge. Is he trying for dictator?"

Few White House reporters dispute the notion that biased questions are asked every day at the briefing—and often, at presidential press conferences or pool sprays. But Keen said there is a deeper question.

"I think the real debate here is over the definition of a reporter: Is someone who writes for an Internet site a journalist? Are opinion writers journalists? The emergence of news-based Web sites and blogs is changing the definition of our business, and these are questions we'll be wrestling with from now on. And who gets to decide who's a journalist and who isn't?"

The White House certainly doesn't want the job.

"I don't think it's the role of the press secretary to get into picking or choosing who gets press credentials," Scott McClellan said. "I've never inserted myself into the process. [Guckert], like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly, and so he was cleared two years ago to receive daily passes, just like many others are. The issue comes up -- it becomes, in this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist. And there -- it gets into the issue of advocacy journalism. Where do you draw the line? There are a number of people who cross that line in the briefing room. ... There are a number of people in that room that express their points of view."

The spokesman said he would welcome any input from the White House Correspondents' Association, which represents the press corps in its dealings with the administration on coverage-related issues. But the association's president, Ron Hutcheson, does not want the organization to be the arbiter of White House credentials.

"I want the association to be an advocate for getting people into the White House, not for keeping people out," he said. While Hutcheson noted that "we don't want someone hijacking the briefing so they can talk about their agenda, from the left or the right," it's not the task of the association to decide who should be allowed to attend daily briefings.

Hutcheson and two other association board members met Tuesday with McClellan to discuss the issue. They made no decisions at the meeting. The full association board plans a Feb. 28 meeting to informally discuss the matter, but Hutcheson said the organization likely will take no official action.

Taking a hands-off approach was advocated by several correspondents, including Bob Deans, a longtime White House reporter for Cox News Service and former president of the White House Correspondents' Association.

"Even those of us who feel strongly that partisanship doesn't belong in the briefing room were reluctant to try to tell someone else how to craft their questions or to suggest that someone in particular should leave."

Still, he said the daily briefing is "not the place for partisanship—from the left or the right—and it's not a platform for people to come in day after day and espouse their personal or political views. It's not `Crossfire.' "

Deans rejects the notion that all White House reporters bring political baggage to the briefing room.

"There's been a lot of fuzzy talk about this issue in recent days, with commentators warning darkly that all of us had better be worried because somehow none of us is free from partisanship. That's nonsense and it needs to be rejected. Every journalist in that room recognizes that pressing our own biases out of our coverage is a daily work in progress. The point is, it's work we take seriously and we largely succeed.

"When people are watching the White House press briefing they have a right to know that those of us in that room are who we say we are, that we aren't coming in there with some political ax to grind and that we're going to deliver the news straight up without a lot of birdseed. That's the way it is for the vast majority of us in that room. The process suffers when people hijack the daily briefings to advance their own agenda. That does a disservice to our craft, to our credibility, to our mission and to the public we serve.

"Picking and choosing who is and isn't a journalist? That's never been our role. But playing it straight with the public we serve? That's our job. We all take it seriously, and we all suffer when others don't."

Joseph Curl is a white House correspondent for The Washington Times and has covered President Bush since his first inauguration.