Like many others, I’ve been trying to figure out why the “Jeff Gannon” story is a “scandal”, or even a kerfuffle. Daily Kos and his ilk think that it tells us dark truths about the Bush White House. Is their point that the staff should delve into the private life of everyone who wants to ask questions at Presidential news conferences? All the raving about “Gannon’s” (alleged) homosexuality leads one to think so. Indeed, the loony left site Democrats.com shrieks that it “may be the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history”, which is mighty impressive.
There are, however, people with rational motives for hyping this tale. An item in this morning’s Washington Times Inside Politics [ephemeral link] explains why the Editor & Publisher Web site has plugged it half a dozen times (while completely ignoring Eason Jordan).
Reporters on warpath
Leaders of the White House Correspondents’ Association plan to meet with President Bush’s press secretary today to discuss tightening the White House press-credentialing
process. . . .
The meeting follows the recent uproar over James Guckert, a former White House reporter for the Republican-linked Talon News, who had used the name Jeff Gannon and drawn fire for criticizing Democrats as part of a question to Mr. Bush.
Among the potential changes to the credentialing system: tighter restrictions on who can receive daily press passes, such as those Mr. Guckert obtained, and a more active role by the WHCA in approving requests for credentials, which are now handed out solely by the White House Press Office, reporter Joe Strupp writes.
“I can see arguments for a more aggressive credentialing process and for the correspondents playing more of a role,” said Mark Smith, WHCA vice president and a reporter for Associated Press Radio. “And I can see arguments against it.”
Ron Hutcheson, WHCA president and a Knight Ridder reporter, said five members of the WHCA board will meet with Scott McClellan today. He also said the entire nine-member board will consider the credentialing issue during its regular meeting on Feb. 28.
Mr. Hutcheson added that perhaps the White House should require that anyone seeking a day pass first obtain a Capitol Hill press pass, which is distributed by the Standing Committee of Correspondents, a group of congressional reporters.
To translate into English, a clique of journalists was grabbing for greater power over access to the White House, using an alleged “uproar”, audible only in the left-wing fever swamps, as its entrée. Predictably, that was not the kind of public pressure likely to move the Bush Administration. The meeting took place. Mr. McClellan listened patiently. And E&P sadly reports that he budged not an inch. On the other side,
WHCA President Ron Hutcheson said he believed the current system was fine and hesitated to have the correspondents’ association play a bigger role in distributing press passes. “I’m not sure we need to do anything,” Hutcheson told E&P. “I’m not comfortable in passing judgment on who is a journalist and who isn’t. My overriding view is that if I am going to make a mistake, it is going to be on letting people in rather than keeping people out.”
Sounds to me like a man who spent a few minutes in Mr. McClellan’s woodshed being lectured about how the First Amendment isn’t a guild monopoly.
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