Garrongate?

Read this extract from L.A Times article, An Identity Crisis Unfolds in a Not-So-Elite Press Corps and have a ball.

Last month, [...]Talon News correspondent, James Guckert asked President Bush how he could work on Social Security and other domestic initiatives with Democrats "who seem to have distanced themselves from reality."

The openly scornful and seemingly partisan description of congressional Democrats startled some veterans of the White House press room. And they wondered how Bush came to call on the relatively obscure reporter — not just this time, but on previous occasions as well.

Left-wing bloggers soon revealed that the reporter, whom colleagues knew as Jeff Gannon, was really named James Dale Guckert. They also disclosed that Talon News was owned by an avowedly partisan website called GOPUSA. The website in turn was the creation of a conservative Texas political activist named Bobby Eberle.

That stirred a furor over how a seeming Republican agent got clearance to attend White House briefings as a journalist. Soon Gannon resigned.

Then gay activists, indulging in what one media critic called "bloglust," posted on the Internet homoerotic photos of Gannon advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay escort.

More to be found on:

- http://mediamatters.org/items/200501260015

- Chicago Tribune article, The new age of `news', February 26, 2005

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0502260279feb26,1,1926742.story?coll=chi-techtopheds-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true