President Bush has relied on a ringer in recent press conferences: This guy named Jeff Gannon from a right-wing news site called “Talon News” spouts the GOP party line and lobs softball questions at the prez that repeat his own press releases. Metafilter and Salon’s War Room have more.
This is the dark side of the “now everyone’s a journalist” blogosphere meme, a concept that for the most part I think is positive. But once anyone can set up as a journalist, public figures can summon astroturf reporters to do their bidding, and officials can “paper the house” with sympathizers the way theater producers have always done on opening night. (This reminds me of what happened in movie criticism in the ’80s and ’90s, as a variety of bozos went into the business of providing movie “reviews” to borderline media outlets with the sole purpose of giving the movie marketers a bottomless well of positive quotes.)
The only answer, I suppose, is to say to the White House press office, hey, if your bloggers and guys-with-Web-sites get to ask questions at press conferences, the other side’s should, too. Get Kos and Atrios and Tom Tomorrow in there! Mix it up! (No way, I know.)
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