TBT: The Brutal Truth

Monday, February 28, 2005

MP3 of FNW Gannon Segment

Courtesy of John "Fyremoon" Crowhurst - my original host - here's an MP3 of the Gannon Segment from Fox News Watch which you can download here. It's about 6MB and runs about 6 minutes in length. Alas, bandwidth isn't free so please help ol' Fyre out with a PayPal contribution at http://www.fyremoon.net/

posted by Sizemore at 5:27 PM | 0 comment(s)


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Transcript of Gannon Segment on Fox News Watch

After burning much of the midnight oil recording a portion of Fox News Watch as well as a good part of this afternoon transcribing it, here's what they had to say about "GannonGate" this passed Saturday ...

FOX NEWS WATCH -- Gannon Segment Transcript
Aired 2/26/2005

ERIC BURNS: The dust has settled, some time has passed, and the daily press credential will be issued no more. So, it's time to look back at the amazing adventures of Jim Guckert -- AKA Jeff Gannon -- a right wing political operative who dreamed of being a $200 a night gay escort. Everyone should have a dream ... [dryly]

[Chuckles from the panel]

Here is Guckert being interviewed on NBC's Today Show Thursday telling reporter Campbell Brown about how he got into all those White House press conferences ...

[CLIP From NBC INTERVIEW]

GANNON: I asked to come. They allowed me to come. And apparently there isn't a very high threshold as far as somebody's personal life to gain access.

[END OF CLIP]

ERIC BURNS: Jane, what is this story really about? Is it about how anybody can get into the White House for a press conference? I mean, he was a journalist. Was it about his personal life? Could you explain it to me?

JANE HALL: Well, I think the hypocracy and concern of, you know ... They're alot of different issues here. Here's a guy that is called on alot as the group Media Matters - a liberal group - has pointed out. I mean, I just wonder whether a guy whose obviously phrasing left wing questions would've had a press credential for 2 years and was funded by a GOP related group ... It's hard for me to imagine that this could've happened if the bias were on the other foot. So, that is what's partly amusing about it to some people.


ERIC BURNS: But, Let me give you an example of one those questions he had asked. He said to the president at one point reffering to Democrats, 'How are you going to work with people who have divorced themselves from reality?' So, he did give a clue, Jim, that he certainly wasn't a partial journalist.


JIM PINKERTON: Right, although I think you were unfair calling him 'right-wing' in your intro.

ERIC BURNS: Really?!?

JIM PINKERTON: I do ...

NEIL GABLER: I think you were unfair calling him a 'journalist'.

[Eric Burns & Cal Thomas erupt in chuckles]

JANE HALL: Well, I think he was biased when he called him a 'journalist'

JIM PINKERTON: I can't help it because I think right-wing/left-wing are clearly perjoratives.

ERIC BURNS: I didn't mean it as a perjorative. I meant it as a ideological position.

JIM PINKERTON: [Stammering] I know, but ... but ... the proper term would be 'conservative'.

JANE HALL: And our term would be 'progressive'...

ERIC BURNS: Are there alot of other things that I do that you don't want me to use?!? [Sarcastically]

JIM PINKERTON: [Smirking] Well, after the show ... you know

[Chuckles all around]

JIM PINKERTON: Well, let me help Jane in this business about ...

JANE HALL: [To Jim] Don't pat me when you're condescending me, please ...

JIM PINKERTON: Who gets in the press corp? There's a fellow named Russell Macomber who writes for Corporate Crime Reporter who's been there for 4 years asking questions about the USS Liberty and if the Israelis are part of some conspiracy, whether the US committed war crimes in Iraq ... I mean, he is a left-wing Naderite by background and for ...

NEIL GABLER: 'Left-wing' or 'progresssive'?

[Chuckles all around]

JIM PINKERTON: Okay! I'll say it. I feel like insulting him! But for ...

[Neil Gabler gaffaws]

JIM PINKERTON: But for four years, and nobody in the White House press corp
compained about him.

JANE HALL: But the fact is ...

JIM PINKERTON: Gannon/Guckert gets in there and all of a sudden it's different. I think that is literally a double-standard.

JANE HALL: He was ... He was clearly posing questions that fed into their storyline about democrats divorced from reality and souplines. Rush Limbaugh even said, 'Gee, that was a line I used!' He used it as a White House reporter allegedly. It's different.

CAL THOMAS: Well, if we want to talk about softball questions, even credentialed reporters over the years have tossed even the most UNBELIEVABLE softballs. For example, there was the late Sarah McClendon who once said to Bill Clinton in the midst of that whole Monika Lewinsky thing, 'Sir, will you tell us why you think people have been so mean to you? Is it a conspiracy? Is it a plan? They treat you worse than they treat Abe Lincoln!'

ERIC BURNS: So, is that what this is about then, Neil? Is this about the softball questions because of the political orientation of the person ...

NEIL GABLER: Absolutely not.

ERIC BURNS: What is it, then?

NEIL GABLER: There are many many journalists - and we know alot of them - who ACT like partisan hacks. This guy WAS a partisan hack. And there's a difference.

CAL THOMAS: I'm not a partisan hack, but I play one on TV. Is that it, right?

NEIL GABLER: Yes. He worked for a GOP operative. He would not have been credentialed and was NOT credentialed by Congress for precisely that reason. Among other things, they have a rule that if you're a lobbiest for an organization, you can not be credentialed. So, this issue here is that this person should have NEVER been credentialed, was not credentialed by Congress, and we know the ... I know there's some Democrats that disingenously are trying to investigate how he got credentialed. We KNOW how he got credentialed -- the White House wanted him there. They wanted him to ask softball questions and ...

ERIC BURNS: What about the guy Jim mentioned asking hardball questions? They certainly didn't want that, did they, Neil?

NEIL GABLER: Well, then he shouldn't even be there. But the point of the fact is I don't know whether or not he got a daily credential every single day as Guckert did. Every day for ... for years ...

JIM PINKERTON: I agree that Guckert/Gannon getting a pass ... I worked in the White House for 6 years and I can tell you that there's somebody, you know, with a false name is ... but the Secret Service ...

NEIL GABLER: On a daily basis.

JIM PINKERTON: [nodding] On a daily basis takes an incredible ammount of intervention from somebody high up in the White House. That I would ...

ERIC BURNS: So it wasn't just that someone overlooked this. It was complicit.

JIM PINKERTON: It was conscious, yes, and some investigation should proceed and we should find that out. However, as I pointed out many times on this show, there's this new phenomenon called 'bloggers' and there's 8 million of them at last count. Lots of them have lots of facts including what they did to Gannon/Guckert what other bloggers did to Dan Rather in terms of taking apart the story through hard work and elbow grease. But we're having new categories of journalists and so I'm hesitant to say that anyone with a first amendment Free Speech right should be muzzled or intimidated from saying whatever they feel like because that's just what a free press is.

NEIL GABLER: Just not in the White House press corp.

ERIC BURNS: But the point is, Jane, we have a finite ammount of space here and there has to be some distinction ...

JANE HALL: There has to be and I talked to a White House press person who was arguing Jim's point - you don't want to restrict free speech - but there's actually a serious question of security for the President. If you have that kind of a lapse and somebody is intervening, that's a serious issue.

CAL THOMAS: I agree with that and there's another point to be made. The Congressional press galleries, as Jim says, for years, has credentialed and decided who is a ligitimate journalist and who is not. They're really behind the times on this Internet stuff. Slate, for example, and some other conservative websites. Who IS a journalist? I think that is something that needs to be looked into again and new rules established.

NEIL GABLER: Guckert, by the way, thanks among other people Karl Rove for his insistance, encouragement, and guidance. I think that is very, very interesting.

ERIC BURNS: [dryly] Well, he's a polite fellow ...

JIM PINKERTON: That's called brown-nosing your sources ...

[END]

I also have this in MP3 format but I can't login to my FTP server at the moment until I get a reply back from my administrator (whenever that may be) so if anyone is interested in hosting it, by all means send me a scream.

posted by Sizemore at 3:34 PM | 9 comment(s)


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Saturday, February 26, 2005

Silence Is Not Golden

Gannon Gate is still rolling out there on the blogopshere but it's now getting alot of attention in print media via editorials. Alas, some papers in the land are relegating it to their "Style/Entertainment" sections, which is a damned crock. Nonetheless, Jeff Gannon is simply reamed and for good reason. The latest commentaries come courtesy of WorldNetDaily (of all places).

Let's start with Bill Press:


If you suspect the media are guilty of a double standard when it comes to covering the White House, you're right. It's now clear, without a doubt, that White House reporters are as easy on President Bush as they were hard on President Clinton. Consider the case of phony White House reporter Jeff Gannon. You probably never heard of Gannon. No wonder. The mainstream media have largely ignored him – even though his story is as big a sex scandal, if not bigger, than anything that happened under Clinton.

And we'll finish with Joeseph Farah - WND's Founder:


You might remember the two-year fight WorldNetDaily waged to become credentialed by the Senate Press Gallery. Meanwhile, an activist organization – pretending to be a journalistic one and ensnared in personal scandal – pranced into the White House and secured access to the president of the United States. It raises serious security questions. It raises questions of propriety. It raises questions of judgment. And it raises questions about the role of a free press in a free society.

Fox News Channel's "News Watch" program is about to air a segment on Gannon as we speak. The segment just finished and my score is both Jane Hall and Neil Gabler hit the nail right on the head while Jim Pinkerton tried to diffract attention from Gannon to another reporter whom has been nailing Bush with hardball questions for 4 years without any hub-bub but forced to concede to Gabler who brought up that fact that nobody knows if "the other reporter" had a hard press pass or a daily pass. Cal Thomas said very little but was rather fair in what he did say. Overall, not a bad segment from the "Republican News Network" ...

Lastly, Bill Berkowitz asks the same damned question I've been asking myself for the past few days: Where's the outrage from the Christian Right? Seriously, where's Jerry Falwell? Pat Robertson? The Catholic Church? The Southern Baptists?!?

Their silence is speaking volumes ...

posted by Sizemore at 6:19 PM | 0 comment(s)


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Saturday, February 19, 2005

Coming out of the closet .... sort of!!

Andy Cooper makes my nipples hard in this transcript of an interview with Jeff Gannon conducted earlier yesterday. Although you can't really tell from just reading the transcript, he completely picks Gannon apart as if he were a fully loaded Lexus parked in front of a Detroit crack house. All Gannon does is ... well ... sit there and squirm. There's a Quicktime video of this interview at other fine blogs such as Media Matters and Crooks & Liars but their bandwidth has been hammered and could use a donation to help pay the bills. Also, John Aravosis of Americablog and The Daily Kos continue to be undying bastions of Gannon coverage. All these fine folks could use your generous support in their efforts of picking up the ball that the greater corporate media won't touch (Lest It Pisses Off Thy Shareholders!)

As for me, my unfortunate and uncanny resemblence to Gannon has moved me to replace that picture to the right very soon. Mainly, because it's an old pic from last summer and the only people that remain bald during the cold ass Michigan winter either can't help it or are just simply numb from the neck up (in more ways than one). Since Gannon broke, people look at that and ... welll ... I can handle "Dude, you look like Stone Cold Steve Austin" but when people start saying, "Holy shit! It's that HotMilitaryStud guy on the news! I heard he likths the lavender handcuffths!", I have just got to draw the line somewhere.

However, I'm going to empathize with Gannon on one thing and that's the usage of a psuedonym because of having an often mispronounced surname. Personally, I can't order a fucking pizza without the person on the other end saying, "Sizemore ... um, how do you spell it?!?" But my "PsychoSy" handle is something beyond my control as it dates back to Junior High School in 1987 and has stuck with me ever since. This is where my empathy stops and my questions begin: If Gannon had to fork over his Social Security Number every single day for 2 years or so in order to get a daily press pass, then why would both Clueless McClellan and Dubya call him by his fake name instead of his real one? His number won't punch up "Gannon" -- it'll be "Guckert". Clearly Gannon is either a plant or had some connection inside the White House -- a connection so good that everyone seemed to have been coached on how to address him if they ever decided to call on him (e.g. "See that bald fuck? His name's J.D. Guckert but make sure you call him Jeff Gannon!") or both.

Lastly, the moment the blogosphere unearthed evidence of Gannon's presence in the WH moshpit long before Talon News started eating up precious CPU cycles was also the moment his multitude of spread-eagled, testicle-jouncing homosexual profiles became relevant. Why? Because the question just begs to be asked: In what capacity was Jeff Gannon's role then?!? Bottom line: His pecker tracks are on or in something (or someone) within The Bush Administration. To limit the scope of that invesigation, I hearby outrule a blue dress ... that is unless ol' Scotty has something personal he really doesn't want us to know about (or Rove, for that matter!)

posted by Sizemore at 12:59 AM | 0 comment(s)


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Thursday, February 10, 2005

Propa-Gannon!

The Daily Kos has an exhautive rundown of all things Gannon. For those who don't know, The Bush Administration is under heavy fire for possibly planting a fake reporter from a fake news organization into the White House Press Corp. The fake reporter "Jeff Gannon" (real name: James "J.D." Guckert) reported for a fake conservative news organization called "Talon News". Talon News is owned and operated by a Conservative political activist by the name of Eberle whom also runs GOPUSA, INC.

My personally opinion on the matter is when a reporter - be they conservative or liberal in bias - uses an alias and then manages to get White House press corp credentials 3 days after the launch of the website the reporter is employed by simply speaks volumes for a Presidential Administration that watonly pushes propaganda onto the American public and is immediate grounds for a full-fledged investigation ... leading upto possible impeachment (the latter because both George W. Bush and Scotty "Clueless" McClellan have been calling on and refering to Gannon at press briefings by name).

If that's not enough?

Gannon also appears to have been the source conservative collumnist Bob Novak used to out CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to the public last year. Since Gannon has been outed first by the Blogosphere which then steamrolled into the corporate news agencies such as CNN and MSNBC, Gannon posted on Talon's website that he's calling it quits going so far as to that that "the liberals are after me because I'm conservative, I own a gun, drive an SUV, and am a born-again Christian". Gee, Mr. Gannon ... did you become born-again before or after you helped setup gay pornographic websites?

Talon News has also scrubbed from their website of all things Gannon ...

posted by Sizemore at 1:52 PM | 2 comment(s)


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