From talk radio to Fox News. Williams and Gallagher and the other paid columnists. Buster the Bunny. The whore in the White House press corps. Paid bloggers for the GOP campaigns.

The GOP is waging a covert, but very real, attack on freedom of the press in this country. It is an attack on a core American value, and upon the American people's right to know. It is perhaps the scariest and most harmful thing, long-term, that this heartless and corrupt administration has done to the United States. With the freedom of the media also threatened by corporatization, the free press is now facing a two-front war. It is in the greatest interest of *all* Americans (even the shortsighted right-wingers now attacking it), that the press not lose this war. If freedom of the press is lost, how can we remain a free country?

Wow, at least, SpongeBob is not at all that bad as the GOPs make it out to be. Let them defend Gannon. We will soon be getting more imitations of exposed breasts as freedom of speech. The White House can defend their pimp/prostitute so can the likes of Janet Jackson defend their exposed badges too! Free Speech for all. Great!

I think that the journalism profession has been badly damaged over the years but there are still some professional journalists that have maintained their integrity despite the outside and inside pressures. If the public abandons them to the corporations and the right wing extremists then we will have lost freedom of the press. We can not allow cynicism to prevent us from fighting for our rights. If we do, then all is lost.

I don't think 1/2 the people here get how important this is to all Americans.
This is not sponge bob or sex.

This is about freedom of the press.

(It is no wonder they start with spongebob, to distract from the real issues at hand. Then the freedom of the press will forever be gone,
and it will be too late.)

most of this country is asleep. What will waken them?

Well, I can't believe it! We actually agreed on two things today! Three, if you count that I said Al Gore should feel free to run in 2008!

An editorial upcoming from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So far, this is the first editorial I have seen on the topic and is an important development as editorials are the "voice" of a newspaper, as opposed to columnists, who are solo voices.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Heard about the Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert muck-up in Washington? If you are an aficionado of the blogs, you've heard plenty. They're having a field day with it. But underneath all the fun lies a serious problem that hasn't gotten its due from the mainstream press: This White House employs a lot more kinds of fakery than the budgetary smoke and mirrors described in the editorial above.

Here's a summary: For more than two years, a reporter named Jeff Gannon turned up at White House briefings and press conferences, where he asked softball questions with a decidedly pro-Bush bent. For example, at President Bush's Jan. 26 press conference, Gannon asked how Bush could work with lawmakers like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Hillary Clinton, "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

Well, it turns out that "Jeff Gannon" is really Jim Guckert, and he was a reporter for an online outfit caled "Talon News," which was associated with the online group GOPUSA.com, owned by Texas Republicans. It also turns out that Guckert, in addtion to reporting for a phony Web site, has no real journalism training and is a $200-an-hour gay prostitute. He ran numberous Web sites like militaryescortsm4m.com. The photos of Gannon that were displayed on those Web sites left nothing to the imagination about his physical attributes.

So the question becomes, just how did this character get White House press credentials, despite supposed post-Sept. 11 security requirements? Bruce Bartlett, a conservative columnist who worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, says that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." In other words, the White House wanted him at those briefings and wanted him to ask his softball questions, most likely to divert attention when legitimate reporters were getting too pushy.

This is part of a pattern by Bush's minions to construct a phony reality in news coverage. Consider:

To promote Bush's Medicare prescription bill, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paid for phony "newscasts" that were distributed to television stations nationwide.

Columnist Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.

Columnists Michael McManus and Maggie Gallagher were paid to "advise HHS on the Bush administration's marriage policies.''

Every Bush "town hall" forum during last fall's campaign was carefully limited to supporters who would ask fawning questions. No demonstrators -- indeed, no one wearing an offensive lapel pin -- were allowed in.

The Bush Pentagon launched an Office of Strategic Influence to provide "news" to foreign media. When it became known, it was shut down in embarassment.

The pattern is clear: This administration will do pretty much anything to shape reality to fit its agenda.

Another powerful tool in its arsenal is intimidation. This is by far the most vindictive administration since Richard Nixon's. Ask the wrong question or write something the White House doesn't like, and your access is cut off. Unfortunately, too many of the real journalists have gone along meekly. As columnist Michael Kinsley observed, if this White House said two plus two equaled five, there would be no shortage "of media to report both sides of the question.''

Once it was fairly easy to distinguish real reporters from hacks and charlatans, objective news from partisan rant. That has become increasingly difficult, thanks in part to a Bush White House that finds the confusion useful, to its everlasting dishonor.