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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (850)	3/5/2005 12:33:00 AM
From: zonkie	Respond to of 9838

Nothing really new in this piece but it is well written and concise. ------------------- Gannongate and Asian Pacific America By Phil Nash, Mar 04, 2005 Imagine for a minute that we are back in the Clinton era. Someone breaks the story that a former male prostitute posing as a phony news reporter has been allowed into the White House every day without a full background check. This “reporter” got his start in the prestigious White House press corps despite having no prior journalistic experience and being denied press credentials by Congress. This “reporter” is on a first-name basis with the president and White House press officials. Legitimate White House reporters notice that he seems to ask questions that are supportive of the president and disparaging of the other party. Second, and more importantly, he seems to have inside information before anyone else does, including major newspapers and television networks. President Clinton was impeached and almost removed from office for having sex with an intern and then lying about it to a grand jury. While these are serious matters, the facts above describe comparably serious matters in a real story that is breaking at this moment, yet the Republican-controlled Congress is doing nothing to investigate it. Unfortunately, the so-called liberal media is showing itself to be a cowed, conflict-averse shadow of the Fourth Estate that successfully challenged and brought down the Nixon presidency 30 years ago. Huge corporations own most of our media outlets these days, and their balance sheets have been enriched by Bush administration policies. Rocking the boat and undermining the corporate-dominated GOP agenda is not in their interest. Go to americablog.blogspot.com or www.dailykos.com or type the name “Jeff Gannon” into your favorite search engine, and you will see the credible evidence that has been unearthed about this story by citizen journalists known as “bloggers.” The story of Mr. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, is at least as interesting as the Michael Jackson trial or Martha Stewart’s prison life. Moreover, the Guckert/Gannon case raises important questions related to White House security in the post-Sept. 11 era and tampering with the objectivity of the press as well as possible White House leaking of classified national-security information. Finally, the male-prostitution angle raises the question of how officials could regularly welcome a person into the White House who allegedly was participating in an illegal activity (contrary to what Mr. Gannon/Guckert says, this is not a “private issue” because his nude pictures soliciting “business” are still on the Internet as I write this column). Our nation’s founders wanted the separation of power so that the president, Congress, the Supreme Court, the independent press and state governments could each serve as a brake on the power of the others. Unfortunately, the Republican cover-up of the Gannon/Guckert story is the latest example of the dangers of one-party rule in our federal government and the complicity of our corporate-controlled press in allowing one party to dominate. The Bush administration already has been proven to have paid reporters to report favorably on its education and social policies. Did it go so far as to use a phony reporter from a phony news agency so that the administration’s press releases could be presented as news stories? Many Asian Pacific Americans came to this country to escape one-party states where government accountability and press freedom were not strong. Some of us suffered from incarceration behind barbed wires because of our national origin during World War II. We understand how fear of an outside enemy can be used as a reason to limit civil liberties and quell dissent at home. All of us should be calling for an independent inquiry into the Gannon/Guckert situation. Our most cherished constitutional rights depend on an administration that is accountable to the people and a press that is free of government control. ---------------------------------------------------- Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at asianweek@nashinteractive.com news.asianweek.com