Jeff Gannon + Eason Jordan= Liberal Media Hypocrisy

For the last several days I've been analyzing the impact of blogging on the liberal media and the probable backlash over Eason Jordan's ousting from CNN (see posts below).

If conservative bloggers supposedly got "carried away" calling for Jordan's head on a platter over remarks that US troops were targeting journalists, then what do you call what their liberal counterparts have done to Jeff Gannon and Talon News?

I've had some personal dealings with Talon News which I'll get into in a moment.

For the life of me, I still can't figure out what the media thinks is the story behind "Jeff Gannon" and his temporary White House press passes. It was the subject of a lengthy Anderson "Vanderbilt" Cooper slanted CNN segment just this evening.

But where's the scandal?

At least with Jordan, there is evidence that he actually said something strange, with Gannon, there are nothing but still-unproven allegations.

So he used a pen name. Big deal- many, many people in the media do this throughout their entire careers without ever disclosing their true identities. It's commonplace on television and radio but also occurs in print journalism for a variety of reasons.

One is when there is a known name conflict with another reporter or other type of journalist. Sometimes, it's for safety reasons or quite frankly, you just don't like your given name very much.

Second, the allegation is that "Gannon" is nothing but a shill for the GOP. The problem here is that Gannon, Talon News and sister site GOPUSA, never made any bones about the fact that they are part of a conservative-leaning operation. There was never a claim that they represented unbiased journalism.

What's the difference between a slanted question from Gannon and one from a liberal partisan from CNN anyway? Since when are the network guys unbiased? They threw lots of softballs during the Clinton Administration.

I had never heard of Talon News until almost a year ago, when one of their reporters covered an incident that occurred at KIRO, my previous talk radio employer.

One of my co-workers, a late-night talk show host named Mike Webb, said on the air that President Bush was guilty of war crimes and as a result should be put to death. Listeners complained, and apparently even produced tapes of the program, but management at the time covered up the incident.

A few listeners in particular, apparently unable or uninterested in having the Seattle-area media cover the story, contacted South Carolina-based Talon News reporter Jimmy Moore, who wrote a story.

Several subsequent pieces were written for Talon by Moore after Webb denied making the statement and used vulgar remarks to describe the agency and reporter. Management continued to back Webb while listeners contacted the US Secret Service.

At this point, tapes of the show in question began to circulate in the KIRO newsroom and I was able to hear the comments in question. I felt a little behind the curve as a big story was unfolding right under my nose, but I was not a listener to Webb's program.

I was impressed by the accuracy of Talon's coverage on the story. In examining their contentions, it was clear they were exceptionally careful in ensuring that their facts were correct, even before Webb threatened a lawsuit against them. They quoted Webb verbatim and in context.

My second encounter with Talon was in September 2004, after my termination over the Dan Rather on-air comments. I was interviewed by dozens of agencies, stations and others (to this day I'm sure who all of them were, it was a whirlwind). Talon stood out in that they insisted that all of their ducks be in a row before running the story. In fact they were the last news agency to publish a piece about my controversy. It was with the same attention to accuracy I had observed earlier in the year.

Yet on CNN tonight, Anderson Cooper was downright reckless in tossing rumors-as-fact into the mix with his interviewee, Howard Kurtz. One was that a photo of a male escort online looked like Gannon. Was Gannon therefore a prostitute? Second, that Gannon ran online porn sites, or did he simply register their names?

Cooper was shameless.

I don't want to hear any more nonsense about conservative bloggers and Eason Jordan after the disregard for ethical standards we have seen from the left on the Jeff Gannon story. CNN, MSNBC, Court TV and others have been quite happy to report rumors from liberal bloggers as fact.

What a double standard. What else do you expect from these people?