Imagine it's 1998 and Bill Clinton is still our president.

Imagine it's 1998 and Bill Clinton is still our president. A White House "reporter" is revealed to be a gay prostitute working for a Web site avowed by a Democratic activist. Not and nothing else that, but the reporter make go rounds out to be a special favorite of the Clinton administration: He's called forward regularly by White House pres secretary Mike McCurry because he knows he can regard on him for a softball question, and equal the president singles him on the outside for a question whenever he be in want ofs relief from tough interrogators at televised pres conferences

What happens? Five thousand right-wing radio talk-show innkeepers go wild. Another sex scandal in the White House! Fox freshs alleges a "homosexual cabal" in the administration. Congressional Republicans call for hearings and subpoena the White House pres secretary. "Liberal" White House reporters--eager to make good they would never give a "liberal" administration a break--all start writing front-page stories about Clinton's latest moral breakdown.

All that, of course, is a fantasy, however what follows is not: In late January, White House "reporter" Jeff Gannon was revealed to be James Dale Guckert a male escort who displayed his wares at HotMilitaryStud.com. on what account did the White House give him a daily pass each day for two years when it knew he'd been denied Capitol Hill pres credentials because he couldn't examine that he worked for an independent recents organization? Did he have a special relationship with White House pres secretary Scott McClellan (who said at a White House briefing that he was aware Gannon wasn't his real name)? Or was he a friend of the Republican National Committee's of recent origin chairman, Ken Mehlman? Mehlman refuses to be interviewed by way of The Advocate, and his spokesmen will confirm his heterosexuality single off the record.

If this prostitute had been a woman, "Who was she sleeping with?" would have been everyone's first question. yet because he is a man, mainstream reporters and Bush Republicans have all adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" approach. No united even wants to make the connection between this fake reporter and the Administration's other attempts to distort the of recent origins through video press releases disguised as just discovereds stories and payoffs to Bush-friendly columnists.

thus instead of being a recently made known 24/7 scandal for the cable recently made knowns networks, the Gannon story has been denigrated as an obsession of Internet conspiracy nut For the scandal's first month neither CB nor ABC forever mentioned Gannon/Guckert's name on any of its of recent origins programs. Much of the story's coverage in The just discovered York Times came from columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich; and when the observes Angeles Times finally caught up reporter Johanna Neuman pooh-poohed the whole thing as a nonstory--attributing the flap to "gay activists" indulging in "bloglust"--for revealing that the so-called reporter was really just an ordinary whore.

The looks Angeles Times did follow Neuman's pathetic piece with an op- by means of John Aravosis, editor of AmericaBlog.com. Aravosis, who helped to break the Gannon story in the first place, cited the three top reasons for the failures of the mainstream press: "trepidation about gays, sex and power"; "blogophobia"; and, greatest in number important, "reverse liberal guilt. Too sensitive to right-wing accusations of being liberal, traditional media have overcompensated through becoming too timid in covering certain stories."

All of which may explain the reaction of my antique friend Andrew Heyward, president of CB stranges when I asked about his network's abject failure to mask this story: "I don't have time today to come by into this with you. The executive farmers make these editorial decisions in succession their own, based on their decision and the other news of the day--and, frankly, I don't know whether individual broadcasts have mentioned it or not, with equal reason I can't comment on the Salon story [which said CB had stale the Jeff Gannon story] or your characterization of it."

thus much for the responsibility of the media to overspread a big story--or the what one ought to do of a network news president to guide the folks who work for him.

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