"Jeff Gannon's" Incredible Access

"James Guckert's mysterious career as a White House correspondent for Talon News just took another strange twist," writes Eric Boehlert. "And once again, the newest revelation raises the central question: Who broke the rules on Guckert's behalf to give him access to the White House? Despite administration claims that Guckert [aka "Jeff Gannon"] simply followed established protocol in order to routinely slip inside the White House briefing room, it now appears clear that Guckert, who just months before his 2003 debut as a cub reporter was offering himself up online as a $200 an hour male escort, benefited from extraordinarily preferential treatment, likely granted by someone inside the White House press office." Some conservative apologists are trying to distract attention from the "Gannongate" scandal by equating Guckert with leftist journalist Russell Mokhiber - a position also expressed in Editor and Publisher magazine. (There are, however, some differences. Mokhiber writes under his own name, and he hasn't plagiarized White House news releases and tried to pass them off as his own reporting. And as far as we can tell, Mokhiber doesn't use photos of his erect penis to advertise on the internet.)