What liberal media, where?

Did you ever wonder about this “liberal media” noise that you keep hearing about? The right keeps up the drumbeat: oh that’s just the liberal media; don’t believe that, that’s the liberal media; and so on.

Now we find that the administration has been paying a pundit: Armstrong Williams, a conservative, to push its programs. Two others have accepted pay for the same thing. None of the three have been “liberals.”

Then we have this new scandal: an apparently fake “journalist” named Jeff Gannon was admitted to the White House - repeatedly. Press Secretary McClellan regularly called on him when he needed a break from the hard questions. Then last week, Dubya himself called on Jeff. Jeff lobbed him this soft ball that misquoted Harry Reid (the new Senate Minority Leader) and made Dear Leader look great and Hillary Clinton and Reid look bad: “Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”

The question was so slimy that it called attention to Mr. Gannon. People began to ask who this guy was. The gang in the blogosphere jumped right on this. Atrios, World O’Crap, and AmericaBlog did, I think, most of the work. Gannon worked for something called Talon News Service. A guy in Texas who runs something called GOPUSA owns Talon. The Talon News reporters are described on the Talon site as “volunteers.” Further research by the boys revealed that Gannon’s work frequently consisted of White House press releases slightly reworked for Talon.

Then came the big news: Jeff Gannon was an alias. This guy had been getting into the White House, presumably the most secure location in the nation, using a fake name. Well no, it turns out that the White House knew all along. Scotty McClellan revealed yesterday that they knew that his real name was James Guckert. Scotty has known this for some time. Guckert was also the owner of several military themed gay meet-up sites, despite writing anti-gay pieces for Talon. Conclusion: collusion. The guy was not eligible for “real” press credentials. Real credentials require a background investigation and a “real” news background, so he’d been admitted for two years on one-day passes. This apparently could only happen with the permission of the White House press office. Mr. McClellan is truly a piece of… work. Oh, BTW, Guckert apparently has no other job except his Talon News “volunteer” correspondent work. Strange, huh?

Then, in addition to scandals, we have the usual raging right-wing background noise: the Fox News Channel and Bill O’Reilly, AM talk radio with Rush Limbaugh and his clones, the Christian media, and a new player, Brian Williams of NBC. Williams is an admitted admirer of Limbaugh and of course NBC is owned by General Electric. GE donated almost $500K to the Republicans for 2004 election cycle. I’ve been watching NBC’s coverage on Social Security and it’s been neither fair nor balanced.

That liberal bias is damned hard to find. Oh well.