Jeff Gannon, Jim Guckert, and... Prostitution?

Quote:

Then how did Clinton get elected?

By two uncontested majorities of the vote. :wink:

... explaining the negative image attributed to journalists over th last few years.

so just to show how fair play with numbers work Timberland how about posting the converse numbers showing the winners vs the losers in actual % of votes.

Freed Journalist Fired on by U.S. Troops

Fri Mar 4, 3:23 PM ET Middle East - AP

ROME - A freed Italian hostage was injured and an Italian intelligence officer killed Friday after a U.S. armored vehicle fired on a car in which they were riding in Iraq, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said.


Berlusconi, an ally of the United States who has kept troops in Iraq despite public opposition at home, said he has asked the U.S. ambassador for an explanation.


"Given that the fire came from an American source I called in the American ambassador," Berlusconi told reporters. "I believe we must have an explanation for such a serious incident, for which someone must take the responsibility."


The shooting occurred Friday at a roadblock near the airport. Berlusconi confirmed that the former Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, was injured by shrapnel. She was taken to a U.S. military hospital by U.S. troops, where she had a minor operation on her left shoulder to remove a piece of shrapnel, he said.


Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said a shooting incident occurred as the Italian woman was being brought into U.S. military control at Camp Victory, the U.S. military base near Baghdad International Airport.


He offered no other details, including whether anyone was killed or who did the shooting.

"David Franz, former commander of USAMRIID, said, "I think a lot of good has come from it. From a biological or a medical standpoint, we've now five people who have died, but we've put about 6 billion in our budget into defending against bio-terrorism."

And then there are the prominent bloggers whose effusive praise for Howard Dean and other Democrats appears to have been fueled by cash from interested paries.

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question-and their source-vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press
Before the certification of "Jeff Gannon" as a White House reporter there was the Bush Administration's de-certification move against the Washington press. These two things are deeply related.
The little Secret Service agent at the National Constitution Center seems more interested in John Ashcroft's tight USA Patriot Act spin-tour schedule than any constitutional rights when he stops me from following a flock of television reporters heading for a brief presser with the man who could not even beat a corpse.
That's Howard Altman of Philadelphia's City Paper (Aug. 28, 2003) describing the experience of trying to cover Attorney General John Ashcroft during his speaking tour on behalf of the Patriot Act.

As the flock disappears down a hall in a hurried scurry, the bespectacled woman in the black dress who could have been Ainsley, the perky Republican from The West Wing, looks at me and waxes apologetic. "I am sorry," she says as the last of the camera crews whiz by. "But he is not talking to print. Only talking to television."
That was when I first became aware that the Bush Administration was putting an end to business-as-usual between the executive and the press. Aschroft had Secret Service agents, or others in his employ, bar newspaper reporters--including of course those at the big national dailies--from press opportunities as he traveled the country arguing for the Patriot Act.

It was a sign: new sherriff in town. "We know who our friends are." All that. Aschroft wasn't the first to declare local TV the only interview worth doing. Except there were certain ideas attached to his move, and these led outward from the Patriot Act into the wider political culture. Ideas like: Eliminate the filter (and guess who that is?) Howard Kurtz reported this on Sep. 15, 2003:

Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock says her boss, with few exceptions, is only granting short interviews to local TV stations as a way of "explaining key facts directly to the American people and not having as much of a filter from people who are already invested in having a different view of it."

Ashcroft's person tells us the story right there. She says it is legitimate to exclude the traditional press, and deny it the role of questioner on behalf of the public, because a.) this group has forfeited all claim to legitimacy by being so invested in a "different view;" and b.) the Attorney General is perfectly capable of explaining the key facts to the American people himself, with the kind assistance of local television stations (she did not say "reporters") who know enough not to filter the message.

It is true that all Administrations want to speak to the nation in an unfiltered way; there's nothing notable about that. All at one time or another see the press as "against" them. All cry foul-- and in the name of the facts! Hating the press is normal behavior in the White House. So is favoring the sympathetic correspondent. What Ashcroft was doing went beyond all this.

There's a difference between going around the press in an effort to avoid troublesome questions, and trying to unseat the idea that these people, professional journalists assigned to cover politics, have a legitimate role to play in our politics. Ashcroft was out to unseat that idea about the traditional press. He wanted it out of the picture of how you battle for public opinion.

"He is not talking to print. Only talking to television."

John Ashcroft in the fall of '03 was simply doing his part in a broader de-certification move that has been mounted against the political press since 2001. His tactics turned out to be among the milder measures the Bush forces were willing to take in pursuit of a policy that I would call post press-- meaning after it is declared from the top that journalists represent no one but themselves.

Before the certification of "Jeff Gannon" as a White House reporter who was good to go there was the Bush Administration's de-certification move against the Washington press, which it felt had to go. These two things are deeply related.

The idea that joins them was stated by Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff: "They don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election," said Card. "I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."

See? No check and balance role. Not representative. That's post-press thinking, coming from the Chief of Staff. It is a political innovation for which Bush does not get enough credit.