As much as I dislike the majority of President Bush's policies, I believe that his social security privatization initiative is exactly what we need to fix a floundering system. Private accounts have proven time and time again to promote growth better than public handouts, and with a stake in the system, people will be sure to look out for their best interests more fervently than the government can. Oh, and Mr. President, please make my check out to cash.
You know, I wasn't originally warm to the idea of selling my column space to the White House propaganda team, but now that it seems to be all the rage, I might as well get my slice of the pie while the rates are still good. As any economist will tell you, competition drives prices down. With more and more journalists competing for some of the action, a part time columnist at a college newspaper will be lucky to get a fast food lunch out of the deal in the near future.
James D. Guckert is the latest "journalist" to submit his services to the fake news market. If you've never heard of him, perhaps you're familiar with his better known alias, Jeff Gannon. For more than two years, Guckert/Gannon has regularly held a White House press pass, allowing him to ask questions to Press Secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, and to even the President himself. When questioning Bush, Gannon -- ever the reputable journalist -- was always ready with a hard ball question, such as asking how the President intended to work with Democrats who were "divorced from reality." Tough questions like that one garnered rewards for James/Jeff, getting him scoops on Dan Rather-gate and the Iraq war hours before the stories broke.
Clearly Mr. Guckert/Gannon is a shrewd business man to see the promise in this burgeoning fake news industry. In fact, he is such an entrepreneur that he has two great jobs! One is reporting for Talon News, an Internet news source that reprints RNC and White House press releases. For Talon, Guckert/Gannon wrote such models of journalistic integrity as "Kerry could become first gay president." Gannon is also connected to a second Web site, GOPUSA. Both sites are owned by a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention. Dana Milbank of The Washington Post had special praise for Talon on MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann. She lauded it as "a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."
Gannon's other, less glamorous job is owning several gay pornography sites, including http://www.hotmilitarystuds.com, on which he is listed as a $200-per-hour erotic escort under the nickname "Bulldog." But how does he manage to juggle these two careers?
I would love to be able to ask Mr. Guckert/Gannon that very question, especially since the two careers seem to be at odds with one another. I'm curious to find out how he managed to use an alias to obtain a White House press pass, especially since a real name is necessary for the mandatory Secret Service background check. That check would most likely reveal Guckert/Gannon as a male prostitute of dubious eligibility for the coveted pass. So did G/G have someone helping him inside the White House, or has there just been a horrendous security breach for the past two years? Delaware Senator Joe Biden wants to know, too, saying to Bill Maher on Maher's show, "Why isn't every major network in the country investigating a security breach, forget anything else ... The Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate should be investigating it. The House Judiciary should be investigating it."
Having operated for over two years, G/G has been reporting for the longest time of the fake journalists that we know. But the more fledgling propagandists have done pretty well for themselves. Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia made completely false news reports funded by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote Bush's Medicare prescription drug plan, reports that even aired as news and have since been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office. Also, conservative columnist Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote the "No Child Left Behind" act and masquerade his paid endorsement as news. That would buy a lot of fast food!
With the fake journalism market booming and bustling, demand for factual, "legitimate" journalism is waning. Unfortunately, scandals and missteps by the actual media such as the Dan Rather incident have further hampered the free and accurate press.
Long after the revelations of paid-off reporters peter out, what will be left is a universal distrust of all media outlets that will not soon go away. With the line between real and fake so thoroughly blurred, who will be able to determine where the truth lies? The politicians who benefit from the propaganda have been slow to demand lifting the smoke screen, further propagating the fake news and allowing offenders to go unpunished.
But when it all comes down to it, I trust that our Department of Justice will be quick to ferret out these purveyors of criminal propaganda and smoke the evil journalists out of their holes. The American people need not worry, as this Department of Justice has been a beacon of strong leadership and good decision-making, even through what few rough patches we've seen over the past few years. And Mr. Gonzales, I trust that my check is in the mail.
--Zachary Goodman is a sophomore.
