If the media wants to do a story on reprehensible bloggers,
they should have gone after the ones on the left who outed
Gannon. Here is a post by a responsible Left wing blog,
Pennywit. (Hat tip to LindyBill)
Back to Gannon
This piece started by calling certain bloggers bottom-feeders and yellow journalists. Exhibit A is Americablog, which has dug up and posted the most unsavory dirt it can find about former Talon News "reporter" "Jeff Gannon," aka "James Guckert," who joined the White House press corps and asked embarrassingly softball questions at White House press conference.
Americablog spends quite a bit of time outlining his allegations, but they all come to one allegation: that "Gannon"/Guckert was a gay prostitute before taking up his career as a conservative ringer in the media circus.
This is beyond reprehensible. All that Americablog has done is to dig up a person's dirty laundry, air it in public, and crow loudly about what a great a great feat of journalism or activism has just been committed. Americablog even attempts a lame justification:
<<<
So in the end, why does this matter? Why does it matter that Jeff Gannon may have been a gay hooker named James Guckert with a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him? So he somehow got a job lobbing softball questions to the White House. Big deal. If he was already a prostitute, why not be one in the White House briefing room as well?
This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a "daily basis." They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika [sic] Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, "inappropriate," whatever. Monika wasn't a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can't find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?
>>>
Similarly, Americablog made a decision to dig into a private citizen's background. Americablog made decision to air that private citizen's dirty laundry on the Web, complete with photographs, tittering, and self-serving justifications. Americablog made a decision to keep the story at the top of the blog for God only knows what reason.
And what is the reason? "Gannon" has already left Talon News. His "journalism" career is dead, and righfully so. "Gannon" is not a government official. "Gannon" is not a "public figure." "Gannon" is no longer even a person of even moderate influence, as his influence is essentially destroyed.
And Americablog's allegations? The scalp has already been harvested, so these new allegations merely amount to dancing on "Gannon's" grave, a ghoulish celebration of a blogger's ability to reach anywhere and make any person's life a living Hell.
Shame on Americablog for invading this man's privacy. Shame on Raw Story for running with this and making insinuations about a White House official's personal life. And shame on Oliver Willis for encouraging this brand of small-scale tabloidism.
pennywit.com |
