Covering his ass, since the heat on the story obviously requires it now, Jeff Jarvis finally manages to notice the Jeff Gannon/Talon News scandal today: and for the sake of his own honor he really ought to have just left it alone.

Not only is Jarvis not celebrating today's story of the triumph of the blogosphere, per my post below: in fact he's lying about the Gannon story. That, or he's managed so woefully to misinform himself as it call into question his ability to read and comprehend. "It seems there are two stories" in the Gannon controversy, Jeff tells us:

1. What the White House did:

The argument on Media Matters and Kos and other sites has been that Gannon is a ringer put in the White House with a fake "news service" called Talon and that he only pitches softball questions and only repeats the official line. If the White House gamed the press corps in that way, that's a story.

2. What bloggers did:

The bloggers went after Gannon personally, first trying to expose his real name and then his sex life. If Gannon is part of a homophobic organization and if he is gay, then that's a story about hypocrisy. But is it a news story? I'm not comfortable with outing as news, for there was a time not long ago enough when revealing someone's homosexuality was a story and a scandal and a crime when it should not have been; to use that sort of attack by innuendo for the other side -- just because it's for the other side -- doesn't make it right. So here, the bloggers end up as the story.

Notice the deft way Jarvis splits this in two pieces. One the one hand we have an "argument" made about Gannon's status as a journalist, and Talon's as a news service; on the other, the investigative work (done largely on Kos), in which "bloggers end up as the story"—not for their citizen journalism, as it happens, but for their questionable behavior in indulging in "attack by [sexual] innuendo." As if the one had nothing really to do with the other.

Notice, too, how quickly that phrase "expose his real name" flits past in Jarvis's account: his sole reference to the fact that "Gannon" was operating under a pseudonym. That's how you know Jarvis isn't just too stupid to get it, that instead he's deliberately distorting the truth. Jarvis is concerned to avoid giving "Gannon's" pseudonymity its proper place in his account, because he wants to obscure from his readers the actual logic of the Kos investigation to this point. So, for any Jarvis readers who might find themselves over here, let me spell it out for you.

"Jeff Gannon" was accredited to the White House under an assumed name. This is not only not the common procedure for accrediting journalists; it appears to be unprecedented. Given "Gannon's" employment with a shady, recently created news organization (with links to the Texas GOP), his written work essentially plagiarizing RNC press releases, his apparently cozy relationship with Scott McClellan in White House press conferences: the fact of his working under a pseudonym suggests that somebody is hiding something, and allows the inference that the something may have to do with Talon News and with the White House press operation. Under these circumstances, any competent—any rational investigator—would follow the pseudonym: would start by trying to recover the identity the false name has masked.

Not two stories, in other words, but one, with an obvious logic: uncover "Jeff Gannon's" real identity as an avenue into the story of a White House intent on crafting the means of, as Jarvis so delicately puts it, "gaming the press corps." (A less delicate way to put it would involve the use of the term "covert propaganda.") Nobody pursuing this story gives a rat's ass about Gannon except as a way in to whatever's being hidden. If he has, in fact, been outed as gay, that's an incidental effect of the pursuit of the real and only story ("collateral damage," a term I'm sure a warblogger like Jarvis is on comfortable terms with). To pretend that making a personal, sexual smear is on anybody's agenda is to utterly, and contemptibly, mischaracterize an extraordinary act of citizen journalism. (Yes, there was a certain surprised, amused reaction when the gay angle emerged, but nobody thinks that angle is anything except a momentary diversion from the actual investigation.)

This logic really can't be that difficult for anyone with a journalism background to understand. (It especially shouldn't be difficult for someone who spends so much of his time promoting the "citizen journalism" he and his blogger pals think they're doing.) I'm sure Jeff Jarvis understands it perfectly well. He just doesn't want his readers to. Oh, and the next time Jarvis starts crowing about blogging and citizenship and all that: well, now you know what that's worth.

posted by michael  11:54:38 PM  
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Another triumph! If you're a frequenter of left-liberal blogs, you probably already know—since this somewhat undernourished one's unlikely to be your first stop—about the "Jeff Gannon" story: how an untrained, inexperienced non-journalist, one J. D. Guckert, become the "Washington bureau chief" of a shady, cut-out conservative "news agency," Talon News; how he was credentialed, under the Gannon pseudonym (and thus in an inexplicable break from the ordinary rules), to the White House press office; how he was used, willingly and often, as a source of softball, RNC-scripted questions at White House press conferences—ready to hand for Scott McClellan whenever things threatened to get sticky.

Following Media Matters' lead, and in the entire absence of interest from the major press (including those sadsacks from organizations like the New York Times, who after all only shared the room with this self-evident fraud), a bunch of members of the Daily Kos community got to work and, in an extraordinary piece of collective citizens' journalism, exposed Gannon's actual identity. (This Daily Kos diary is a good starting point if you want to get further into the thing; scroll down a bit into the comments to find a short list of key earlier diaries in the investigation.) And just this morning we learn that Gannon/Guckert has had enough and is headin' for the hills.

And I find myself wondering: why do I hear no sound of celebration from the big blog triumphalists?

You know the guys I mean: the Instapundits, the Power Liners, the Hugh Hewitts and Jeff Jarvises; the passel of right-wingers who blow so hard so often about the power of blogs to displace and demolish the hated MSM. Cause it's all right here, isn't it, in the Gannon story? Yet another victory for the blogspace over the institutional media! Yet another example of how the massively-interlinked community of bloggers can gnaw at a story, refusing to let it drop, until they force accountability in the offline world! Come on, Jeff, Hugh, the Daily Kos people have done exactly the kind of thing that always seems to get your rocks off. Why not join the party?

Granted, Gannon/Guckert is a relative small fry, in spite of having been an accredited White House correspondent: and besides, after having made a meal of Dan Rather and CBS over the forged TANG papers, maybe the boys are busy digesting. Urp, sorry, no, can't eat another bite—nope, not even if it's wafer-thin.

Alas, here I have to call a Sadly, No! on myself. As it happens, there's been blog triumphalism aplenty on the right these last two weeks, sucking up a lot of the oxygen. The deal: speaking at Davos last month, Eason Jordan, CNN's Chief News Executive, may have said—or may have said something that could be interpreted as saying—that journalists who have come under fire in Iraq have in some cases been targeted and killed by American troops. The tempest-in-a-teacup of "journalism" that ensued (they like to call it a "blogstorm" in the Instysphere) wasn't, in fact, about trying to ascertain whether the supposed accusation was true or not: it was about forcing Eason Jordan to put up or shut up what Hugh Hewitt calls, tellingly (and on only hearsay evidence) his "malicious blast at the troops." Yesterday, Jordan, via Howard Kurtz in the WaPo, came forth with what appears a reasonable and issue-ending clarification—and let's let Jeff Jarvis, a bit chastened but triumphalist nevertheless, clean up in its wake:

Meanwhile, Jay Rosen sends an email to blogging friends (which I assume he'll turn into a post soon) that talks about how bloggers filled out the story with journalism while the press remained silent. (Says Jay: "That is not necessarily bad that the press remains silent. If it's a non-story, remaining NON is just fine." I agree.) Sisyphus gets the WEF to admit it has a tape of Jordan's comments and tries to get them to release it. He "commits an act of journalism in a shockingly simple way. Email the right guy." ... Yes, there was a snitfit, a blogstorm -- and until there was clarification, that's what it takes sometimes. And there was also journalism. Both were pressure to get to the bottom of the story. ...

This is about the death of off-the-record at any event citizens attend. The WEF is now trying to decide whether the event was or wasn't off the record. Doesn't matter anymore, folks; that's irrelevant. The citizens in the room haven't agreed to play by your rules the way journalists have. If they hear something, they'll repeat it. If Jordan had, in fact, said that journalists were targeted as journalists by soldiers -- which he didn't; just speaking in the hypothetical here -- then how can anyone expect the citizens, the citizen journalists, the bloggers in the room to remain silent? They shouldn't.

So, let's see if I understand the difference here between the Gannon story and the Eason Jordan foofaraw—beyond just the fact that CNN's bigger than Talon News, which I'm confident would cut no ice with crusaders like Hewitt and Jarvis:

• A CNN executive is caught making remarks, possibly imprudent, and bloggers leap in to enforce a speech code on him, wresting a clarification in response;
• A phony reporter, operating under a pseudonym, is mysteriously accredited to the White House for a shady conservative news outfit with funding ties to the Texas GOP—and bloggers search out his identity and expose him and his organization.

Clearly, we have somewhat divergent ideas of "citizen journalism" operating on the two sides here.

When bloggers work together to damage the credibility of a "liberal" media organization: Huzzah, for the Day of the Blogs is at hand! When they work together to damage the credibility of a bogus conservative outlet—and, in the process, lay another brick in the larger, not to say epochal story of the Bush administration's covert domestic propaganda machine—er, not so much. Thanks for clearing that up, Jeff.

posted by michael  11:33:23 AM  
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