Posted on 02/19/2005 5:25:40 AM PST by FairOpinion
The following is the transcript of the Friday night CNN interview of Jeff Gannon/James Guckert by Anderson Cooper.
COOPER: There are many questions that have been raised about whether or not -- people raising the specter that you are somehow a White House plant. Are you a White House plant? Were you (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?
GANNON: Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, how I came to be at the White House is I asked to attend a briefing. I asked the White House Press Office. They gave me a daily pass to get in.
COOPER: This liberal group, Media Matters, which I'm sure you know well about. They have been very critical about you, really looked into this probably closer than just about anybody. They say that essentially, you are not a real reporter. And it's not even a question of being an advocate, that you have directly lifted large segments of your reports directly from White House press releases.
GANNON: All my stories were usually titled "White House Says," "President Bush Wants," and I relied on transcripts from the briefings, I relied on press releases that were sent to the press for the purpose of accurately portraying what the White House believed or wanted.
COOPER: But using the term "reporting" implies some sort of vetting, some sort of research, some sort of -- I mean, that's called faxing or Xeroxing, if you are just lifting transcripts and putting them into an article.
GANNON: If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they believe.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediainfo.com ...
It's an embarrassment all ways around. One gay blogger is vicious but no dumb, he has the photos and they are Gannon's. By photos I mean it's gay guys exchanging info for hook ups
But I'm sure Cooper holds a higher opinion of Dan Rather, the guy that tried to sell fiction as fact.
But whatever Gannon is or was, does not invalidate his perfectily reasonable questions. THAT is what really upsets the libs -- notice they are NOT asking him about the questions he asked, they don't want him to repeat them.
People should be talking about "The question, that the liberal media couldn't stand":
"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy. 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?"
The MSM will jump on any conservative like stink on you know what. They are not biased though!
Too true.
I, for one, will not and cannot defend this guy. Forget the lies of the left the hype and all that crap and you've still got a sordid, creepy little story.
I wish the guy (guckert) good luck in the future and I hope that he learned a lesson from all this.
Remember James being a male prostitute is a bad bad idea and kind of yukky too.
While the MSM is plainly biased and self-serving, this whole "Gannon" mess could have been easily avoided.
I wonder how many in the liberal MSM have sordid backgrounds, which never get exposed, or if they did, all other "journalists" would jump to their defense, saying, what I said, that whoever they are or were does NOT invalidate their questions and articles.
Remember James being a male prostitute is a bad bad idea and kind of yukky too.
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From what I could tell his internet stud photos were all from 1999. Some were captured from defunct websites via the way back machine. I wouldn't be surprised if Gannon had gotten out of that gay lifestyle. There are fine Christan organizations that help guys to leave it behind, heard one such ex-gay on the radio just last week.
"does NOT invalidate their questions and articles"
I think it does if they are writing and professing to be pro-family and secretly selling themselves as a Gay Marine Escort (that really pisses me off by the way).
Remember the Clinton White House with lots of punk staffers working there who couldn't pass national security requirements. So they worked there for years under constantly renewed temporary passes. Word was out that drug convictions were the problem for most.
Let's be really honest here. If there was a hint that Al Franken used to be a rentboy, we'd make damn sure that info got out.
"Gannon" sure as hell didn't understand what he was doing when he decided to challenge the Media Establishment...but I daresay he's learning.
It's political hardball. If you can't play with the big boys, stay home.
So the reporters in the MSM want the White House to investigate the backgrounds of each and every one of them? Their position is the White House should dig into their pasts, their personal lives, before allowing them to participate in the press corps?
Let me see if I have this correct:
If you take press releases and talking points from a Democratic White House and/or Democratic National Committee and re-print them under your by-line it is news.
If you take press releases and talking points from a Republican White House and/or Republican National Committee and re-print them under your by-line it is not news.
Oh, I see now ……….
I am a bit dissapointed to be honest.
I personally think Gannon/Guckert was a fraud on several levels. If he asked conservative questions it would have been fine. He asked softballs.
Some people here don't see the difference. A hack/plant asks "How can you work with people divorced from reality?" a conservative reporter would ask about the border, about taxes, about the UN, etc.
That is my big point. He was bashing democrats, which I am all for, but he wasn't there to report or ask conservative questions that would hold the feet to the fire of the administration.
It would be like during a Clinton adminsistration briefing, the liberal counterpart just asking Clinton why he was so dreamy, instead of asking him tough questions on NAFTA, Welfare Reform, the death penalty etc.
Gannon was no "conservative" reporter. He was a hooker, who at the age of 47, decided to whore himself out somewhere else.
"So the reporters in the MSM want the White House to investigate the backgrounds of each and every one of them? Their position is the White House should dig into their pasts, their personal lives, before allowing them to participate in the press corps?"
Excellent point. If the WH did that, they would be screaming, that their First Amendment rights are being violated, that the WH is only allowing those, whose personal lives they approve of.
McClellan regularly called on the man.
Not clear if he's still there.
But notice the media studiously ignoring that so called reporter who also got a pass to the White House press corps.
What is the matter with asking an actual QUESTION, instead of levying an accusation, under the pretense of asking a question?
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