Mass media misses imposter, harms credibility

House Editorial

Small-time reporter Jeff Gannon might be the downfall of once-trusted media outlets. Sadly, the changes of which he has been the catalyst are not positive, but rather are a general meltdown of news sources and credible news.

Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert, may simply appear to be another lap-dog conservative reporter gently lobbing questions at the Bush administration, but upon further inspection, he is a puppet, a fraud and a danger to the information we receive.

Though Gannon has been asking amazingly biased questions for almost a year, big media outlets did not pay much attention. It was actually the Internet blogging communities that discovered Gannon’s real name, as well as his true identity.

The bloggers, through their own brand of vigilante journalism, discovered Gannon’s self-sponsored, X-rated homosexual Web site. While the man’s sexual life is really none of our business and not something that should be taken into consideration when judging Gannon as a newsman, it does punctuate two points.

First of all, this scandal has further exposed lapses in media. While media are quick to jump on the latest celebrity gossip, they have been slow in recent examples of investigative and proactive news. It is at these times the bloggers band together, rev their search engines and hunt for the story behind even the smallest player.

The question that arises is who to trust in these instances. The people manning the weblogs have evidence to back up their claims, but they do not have the foundation of large news outlets. These people have taken the news into their own hands, and though they may punctuate in a smiley face from time to time, they appear to have done their homework.

Unfortunately, the bloggers are not reliable. They make headlines when they expose someone like Gannon, but no one reports on the astonishing volume of meaningless information and outright lies on the Web. Bloggers report their facts, but they do so without any ethical, legal or editorial checks.

The media, on the other hand, are turned to because they have a long history and are in the mainstream. Mass media outlets overlook and under research, but the reports they generate are generally regarded as truthful. If a journalist invents stories, they suffer far harsher penalties than a decrease in Web site traffic.

The second problem to come to the surface through all this not only is how out of the loop media are, but how much can we actually trust them at any given time? Gannon was given White House credentials, which gave him access to an array of high-ranking officials. Yet, when faced with the opportunity of quizzing our governing bodies, he merely asked questions that played into their game and offered the opportunity for a well-spoken — possibly well-rehearsed — sound bite.

It can be said that Gannon’s lack of credibility were overlooked by the White House as they saw him as an ally based on his political agenda. Had he been from an underground democrat publication, there is a good chance that he would have been denied credentials.

The face of news is changing — anyone can sit down at a computer and within a few minutes’ time uncover a seemingly bottomless pit of information. In the future, we will have to decide between the Internet blogging communities and big media sources. They both have their strengths and their weaknesses, but the most powerful aspect of both is that they now put the citizen in control. Citizens have the option to listen or ignore; therefore, they both must strive to be the most accurate in order to win our attention.