On the Internet, no one knows you're a fraud. So thought James Guckert, otherwise known as Jeff Gannon, whose life as an escort may have overlapped his life in the White House press corps.

Despite his flimsy credentials as a "reporter" who wrote under a fake name for a web site, TalonNews.com, that is an arm of GOPUSA, and despite his being denied a pass by the Congressial press gallery, Mr. Guckert was able to land a coveted White House press pass almost daily for two years.

His stories often quoted verbatim from White House or Republican press releases, as Media Matters noted. In one article, he alleged that an intern had an affair with John Kerry and had taped an interview with a "major television network." This proved to be completely fictitious. He also warned that Kerry would be "America's first gay president." All of these articles have been removed from the Talon web site.

Guckert put his press pass to good use, serving as a lifeline to Scott McClellan, lobbing softball questions designed more to attack Democrats than elicit any information. On a rare occassion when Bush himself faced the press, Guckert was able to ask the president of the United States:

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy: Harry Reid, who's talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. You've said you're going to reach out to these people. How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

The "soup lines" part was lifted directly from Rush Limbaugh.

Guckert's brief career as a "journalist" also included a pivotal role in the Astroturf campaign against Tom Daschle (see below), as well as a still-mysterious part in the Valerie Plame affair. In the middle of one of the administration's most egregious scandals -- the leak of a CIA operative's name to politically punish her husband for revealing the truth about trumped-up WMD charges -- Guckert apparently managed to get hold of some kind of secret CIA memo that no one else possessed.

And then -- this is where it gets really weird -- bloggers who discovered Guckert's real name, and are continuing to dig for the truth about the Plame memo, uncovered explicit evidence indicating that media-whore Guckert was, in fact, an actual prostitute. (Warning: evidence is rated NC-17.)

Think about it: what are the chances that a media whore like Gannon would turn out to be an actual whore? It's impossible. It boggles the mind how infinitely unlikely this is. It's like if you found someone pirating CDs, and it turns out he actually had a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder and sailed around the Caribbean saying "arrrrrr!" and plundering booty. You wouldn't believe it. But there it is: impossible, but true. (The Poor Man)

Although it remains to be seen what kind of strings were pulled to give a man with such flimsy credentials and such a checkered background access to the White House, what is certain is his place in the burgeoning field of Republican-only news. If, indeed, the White House planted him in its press corps and leaked him classified documents, it would not be the first evidence of a government awash in propaganda operations.

Cutting out the middlemen

In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about -- oh, nevermind. (George Bush, Third debate with John Kerry, 10/13/2004)

The first known instances of state-sponsored "covert propaganda" -- paid political messages from the White House disguised as independent news or analysis -- were the administration's production and distribution of video news releases (VNRs) to be played on local TV stations.

In addition to the usual Ad Council-type public service announcements decrying teen drug use, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) hired a public relations firm to produce at least seven VNRs which were designed to look like regular TV news stories, and even used fake reporters ("This is Mike Morris, reporting"). The VNRs were broadcast on nearly 300 stations.

This is merely the cutting edge of corporate PR. By taking advantage of the dwindling news budgets of local television stations, companies can present their products directly to an unprejudiced public. Ad guru Larry Moscowitz of MediaLink claims, "We determined prima facie and scientifically and electronically that every television station in America with a newscast has used and probably uses regularly this material from corporations and organizations that we provide as VNRs or B-Roll or other terminology we may use."

This is a reprehensible practice which reflects poorly on the journalism standards of newsrooms, to say nothing of the ad men, who have considerably lower standards. But use of VNRs by the state is another matter. With these, according to the Government Accounting Office, the ONDCP crossed the line into "covert propaganda."

The anti-marijuana fake-news segments are almost laughably harmless, merely echoing the basic pitch of countless public service accouncements. Other PR campaigns were more damningly partisan.

In early 2004, as Bush's campaign for president was well underway, his Department of Health and Human Services distributed more VNRs touting his controversial Medicare law at a time when very few of the law's provisions had gone into effect.These VNRs, distributed via a CNN newsfeed and run by about 50 stations, featured a fake-reporting specialist named Karen Ryan, who ended her "broadcast" with the line, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan, reporting." This managed to irk a few press critics, and the Public Relations Society of America duly prohibited further use of the word "reporting." But what of the government? Again, GAO declared this "covert propaganda."

A third VNR campaign was prepared for the Department of Education to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. This, like the Medicare VNRs, was produced by the Ketchum PR firm and also featured a performance by Karen Ryan. The star, however, is a single mother named Valerie Garland (also spelled Valarie), whose first taste of fame was as a human prop in a Bush speech on school choice:

I appreciate meeting Valarie Garland today. We had a very emotional meeting. Valarie is concerned, frustrated, worried. We had a -- we shed a tear or two about the future. Valarie is a single mom, which, by the way, is the toughest job in America. It's really hard to be a single mom in our country. And then she's a single mom who is worried about the education system on top. And her emotions came forth, and we had a good visit about trying to provide a hopeful future for Valarie's child. And I believe we can get the Congress to move on this. It will make a difference in a lot of people's lives here in Washington. (President Bush, Remarks at KIPP DC Key Academy, Dept. of Ed., 7/1/2003)

The Washington Times was kind enough to give this mention in their coverage of this speech:

Valarie Garland, a single mother of two, told the president that she would try to get her children out of public schools if Congress passed the voucher plan.     She said her son's grades were "terrible" but school administrators kept passing him to the next level. "The school system is failing my son, and it's failing me," she said. ("Bush pushed vouchers for 2,000 DC students," 7/2/2003)

A few months later, she reappeared in the VNR to tout tutoring programs, another aspect of No Child Left Behind. The VNR was played on several stations as-is, but others chose to mix it up a little to make it look more legitimate. One station in Albany, NY, used the same footage (available on their website as of this writing) but substituted their own reporter for Karen Ryan.

Valarie Garland's son Brandon is repeating the 11th grade this year. That troubles Garland who knows her son could do better if he had some extra help. (Capital News 9, 10/1/2003)

The next day, the Department of Education reprinted the Albany "news" on their website, reporting that "In Albany, New York, free tutoring gets an A-plus from parents" -- apparently forgetting that Ms. Garland was previously cited by them to support their program in Washington, D.C. Plot discrepency notwithstanding, the cycle of perfect press was complete.

The PR firm contracted by ED to produce these fake-news advertisements was Ketchum, a subsidiary of Omnicom, which received $223 million of the $250 million Bush spent on PR in his first term.

Another product of Ketchum was the fictional black conservative commentator Armstrong Williams. Williams, who ran a PR firm alongside his TV show, radio program and syndicated column, was paid $240,000 of taxpayer money to "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts" as well as run ED advertisements and promote NCLB among his colleagues in the black conservative community. Despite Mr. Williams' disparaging of the program before the contract, he took ample opportunity afterwards to promote the Bush agenda in all media.

Williams has refused to return the money, claiming, quite correctly, "That would be ludicrous, because they bought advertising, and they got it."

The revelation of the Bush administration's pay-for-play contract with Williams was quickly followed by news that two more "independent commentators," Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, were paid for writing in support of Bush's marriage agenda. There are likely to be more. As Williams admitted to David Corn: "There are others ..."

Buzz agents for Bush

There is arguably a certain difference between a partisan who is paid and a partisan who acts solely out of conviction. But that is a relatively subtle difference (John H. Hinderaker, Powerline Blog, 12/10/2004)

There need not be direct use of taxpayer money for propaganda to be disturbing. In the past election, Republicans made heavy use of "guerilla marketing" to create the appearance of a vibrant grassroots movement independent of central planning.

Once again, this is the cutting edge of modern advertising. So-called "buzz agents" have been spotted in bars, groceries, and neighborhood barbeques promoting products among their unsuspecting peers. And corporations have used phony grassroots organizations, called Astroturf, in recent years to fight Kyoto and defend breast implants.

GOPTeamLeader.com, a project of the Republican National Committee, offered conservatives the chance to earn "GOPoints" for sending out prewritten letters-to-the-editor to local newspapers. "GOPoints" could be redeemed for swag such as tote bags, coolers, and leather PDA covers. One letter, affirming that Bush was "demonstrating genuine leadership," made it into more than 100 newspapers, sometimes two or three times.

And in the most high-stakes senate race of 2004, a pair of bloggers led the online charge against the authenticity of Tom Daschle and the supposed bias of the state's main newspaper. By constantly linking to one another and tying in with the conservative blogosphere, they were able to generate enough noise to permeate TV and print media with their message. They can be partially credited with the successful election of John Thune.

As it turned out, the bloggers were on the payroll of the Thune campaign. Oddly enough, many of their talking points were driven by stories from Talon News by Guckert, so that South Dakota had the curious distinction of having a fake reporter feeding fake bloggers to create fake grassroots outrage.

The reality divide

That's what journalism is. It's just all opinion. Just opinion. (Richard Viguerie, NOW with Bill Moyers, 12/17/2004)

Conservatives have spent years claiming that the mainstream media are liberally biased. Accuracy in Media, a right-wing group founded in 1969 and funded by conservative foundations, justifies this claim by citing polls showing Americans believe the news is biased, but it doesn't mention the role played by it and other conservative activists in shaping this opinion.

`The myth of the so-called liberal media, in fact, has played right into the hands of savvy Republicans. Under attack from conservatives for supposedly ignoring the preposterous claims of the Swift Boat vets, the press passively employed what it thought to be objectivity -- reporting the controversy rather than investigating the facts at stake -- and in doing so, gave incredible currency to the narrative the Swifties were promoting. This is reminiscent of the disagraceful 2000 campaign coverage, when the press actively promoted the idea that Al Gore was a liar -- a completely unsubstantial allegation -- by reporting as "news" the RNC talking point fax of the day, and "balancing" it with a denial from the Gore campaign.

Republicans have also been able to use the office of the president to stymie press initiative -- from the simple newsmaking power of the presidential pulpit to overuse of "anonymous background briefings." In October, for example, the White House announced a "major policy address" that was aired live by CNN and MSNBC; it turned out to be just another campaign rally. And the mysterious "senior administration official" has done the hard work of providing substantial statements on everything from WMDs to Bush's alleged Social Security plan.

At the same time as they cast doubt on the reliability of traditional sources of independent news, conservatives work behind the scenes to make sure "new media" sources are reliably biased. Our society is rapidly approaching an information meltdown in which facts are replaced with assertions and nothing can be taken for granted except symbols and feelings. Those who subscribe to disjointed media will have a different perception not only of opinions, but also of facts. For example, FOX News viewers were almost four times as likely as NPR listeners to believe demonstrably false statements about the war in Iraq, such as the notion that we had found weapons of mass destruction.

In this atmosphere, the temptations of honesty are few. If the Great Debate of democracy is reduced to a war of advertising symbols and gimmicks, it is unclear if politics can have any meaning at all. Journalists should be leading the way in a revival of the public sphere, a place in our consciousness beyond ideological reproach. If operatives like James Guckert, or Jeff Gannon, or whatever his name is, can put on a cheap suit and rise to the top of the field, it doesn't bode well for journalism, for reality, or for any of us.