Where Was the Press When This Was Going On? Where Was the Press? While Helen Thomas and hard questions were frozen out, Gannon lobs softball question

MediaChannel.org - A Global Network of More Than 1,000 Media Issues Groups: "Where Was the Press When This Was Going On? | By Danny Schechter | MediaChannel.org | NEW YORK, February 21, 2005 --
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And now there's Gannongate.
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At the moment, everyone is smirking about the antics and improbability of a holier than thou White House conniving with a planted "reporter" who seems to have doubled as an on-line gay sex-for-hire panderer and practitioner, defiling images, no less, of our macho military warriors with websites like militaryescortsm4m.com.
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And yet, what's the question lost in all the focus on the sleazy antics of GOP propaganda plant Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert by a gang bang of bloggers and comedians, including, most hysterically, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart. Where was the rest of the press corps(e) while all this was going on for TWO YEARS?
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Where were the other reporters and news rooms with a permanent presence at the White House Press Room when softball questions and partisan points were being offered up routinely in what were supposed to be press conferences aimed to eliciting truth?

Is this another case of the silence of what Greg Palast calls "the media lambs?"

Weren't any of our journo "pros" curious about this guy and his weird ways and phony news service operating as a front group for Republican hardliners? He was operating right in front of them but seems to have become transparently invisible.

Was the White House Correspondents Association so busy planning its next celebrity dinner to give the President a platform for banal one-liners that none objected to his presence or the favorable treatment this imposter was accorded?

While Helen Thomas and hard questions were frozen out, deference became the order of the day in a clubby and collegial atmosphere that so typifies the servility and complicity of mainstream media.