As I understand it, the qualification for getting a daily pass (and one that has been in effect for some time) is that the reporter work for a bonafide publication or media outlet.
How in the heck would McClellan know about Gannon's background, other than the checks that the Secret Service does for criminal history, etc. That is how the press is screened, not in a detailed, national security type screening.
I will agree that we need someone more effective than McClellan, but I am not going to fault him for Gannon being there.
I don't dispute that and didn't say that Guckert/Gannon is the only person who doesn't belong. But the "press" operation is McClellan's domain and he should have some responsibility here that someone who is by no definition a "legitimate journalist" got to ask the President a question at his press conference. (I would have had the same reaction if Carl of Newsmax asked the President a question.) Just because I may agree with his politics, doesn't make him a "legitimate journalist."
As I understand it, the qualification for getting a daily pass (and one that has been in effect for some time) is that the reporter work for a bonafide publication or media outlet.
Being familiar with Talon material through the preview feature on FR, it never seemed like it offered "original reporting" and the preview was uninteresting enough so that I didn't care to pursue to read the whole article. And to the extent that I was exposed to Jeff Gannon's posts, I wrote him off as a self-promoter who offered nothing new and original (sort of like Talon).
Maybe you want to defend Talon/Gannon's material as original, new, insightful, etc., but IMO it was none of those things.
I don't think that anything Gannon/Talon did qualified as "legitimate journalism" *regardless* of whether other questionners did or didn't, and thus, Gannon had no business asking the President a question at his press conference.
How in the heck would McClellan know about Gannon's background
I never said that, I just thought McClellan should have at least been aware that Guckert/Gannon was not a legitimate journalist and that Talon was not a legitimate news source. If I could know that, and I am a mere interested observer in the realm of political journalism -- and not a professional Presidential press secretary, then it is not too much to expect that McClellan should be aware of Guckert/Gannon/Talon's status.
I will agree that we need someone more effective than McClellan.
EXACTLY! Someone who was more competent than McClellan would have been aware of Talon's status and not have allowed its representative to have questionned the President. (I don't remember Kinsolving asking President Bush questions, although I remember his asking questions of Ari.) I would have given McClellan more of a free pass on this if the questions were just of McClellan, but once Guckert/Gannon got to ask President Bush questions as a representative of Talon I think that is the final word on McClellan's competence.