Controlling the media?
After the recent acknowledgement of instances where the Bush Administration were making payments to Armstrong Williams and 2 other columnists to support current administration policies we now have the case of Jeff Gannon.
Jeff Gannon was a columnist for a conservative website that often lobbed softball questions to Scott McClellan (White house Press Sec.) and to other members of the Administration including Bush (for a selection of his questions go to http://movies.ziaspace.com/Gannon_Questions_Countdown%20With%20Keith%20Olbermann.wmv).
Well it appears that Jeff Gannon wasn’t who he said he was. His real name is James Guckert. He is actually not much of a columnist at all and represented a phony media company with no circulation and limited readership that was also affiliated with the GOP USA.
To get a White House press pass you have to give your real name, your social security number, your birth date and a list of your credentials. Somehow the Secret Service thought it O.K. to issues a press pass that allowed into the White House a reporter who went under an assumed name and whose only credentials seemed to be working on a web site titled “hotmilitarystuds.com”.
Worse yet is that Scott McClellan and the rest of the administration had to know this guy’s real name and yet continued to call him by his alias and continued to answer his questions bringing up questions once again as to what extent the current administration is involved in manipulating the press. Does anyone else find this really disturbing?