“I am concerned that the public may start to wonder: ‘Well what is a journalist and isn’t it all kind of a scam somewhere on the payroll, some seem to work for partisan organizations’ … I fear they may question all of journalism, it’s kind of a con game and a sham and that would be unfortunate.”

— Matthew Cooper, Time White House correspondent, speaking about the perception of journalists in the aftermath of the Jeff Gannon scandal.  

Bloggers recently unmasked Jeff Gannon, who had been installed in the White House as a correspondent for a media outlet, as a journalistic fraud; his real name is James Guckert, the ostensibly responsible media outlet for which he reported, Talon News, has been exposed as a Republican mouthpiece and has now been taken offline, and lurid accounts that link Guckert to pornographic websites have now surfaced.  

Bloggers began to research and subsequently expose Guckert after he asked President Bush the leading question that was too transparently partisan to evade scrutiny: “Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy … How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”

Mimi Hanaoka