Reply #58: Here's mine:

[Clark2008]

Dear Sir:
I'm very concerned with Howard Kurtz's self-preserving opinion piece on the Jeff Gannon/Guckert outting by bloggers.

First, there should be no debate on whether bloggers went "too far" in outting Gannon/Guckert. The fact that this non-professional "journalist" who was gaining access to the people's White House after having only been a part of a six-day-old conservative news website for a few days is troubling enough. That he has a shady past, was able to get away with receiving the daily press passes for nearly two years after giving a phony name and asked
the most inane questions of George W. Bush and Scott McClelland should have caused Kurtz to real back in horror - not bash the people doing the job he, and other reporters, should be doing over the head. Or maybe that is, indeed, the problem.

While a third the media is seemingly under indictment for protecting
criminals who outed a CIA agent and another third are being paid by the Bush Administration to shill stories, the final third are frolicking with the stars at the Micahel Jackson trial. None are reporting news that citizens need to know to make informed decisions about voting, about the soundness of bills proposed by the president and Congress and about things that effect their lives. I'm somehow doubting that Jackson's guilt of innocence will be reflected in my wallet or my son's future.

Kurtz has so totally missed the point of the Gannon/Guckert outing that it boggles my mind and the minds of others who are hearing about this story from their e-mail boxes and not from their nightly news.

The point is that a prostitute was in the White House - a very sexually conservative White House - asking questions of the most powerful people in this country and shilling Republican policy for a rightwing "news" website on national television. And that this prostitute may have had intelligence information shared with him is revolting.

If the news media and/or the White House Press Office had been doing their jobs and questioned this "journalist" about his credentials years ago, maybe it wouldn't have gotten to this point.

Instead, most of the chattering class are now defending him as though he was one of their own.

I was a reporter for 12 years and when a fellow reporter was indicted for murder, I got a good story from him since I knew him, but I still reported his charges, trial and conviction. It was my job.

There is no "run-away" blogging out there - only attempts by the people of this country, who once were indebted to the profession of journalism for their information, to dig under the entertainment muck the media presents as news to find out real information about real events without all the real spin.

We know that Howard Kurtz's wife works for the Republican party in some capacity - but we should only know that because it's in her profile, not because it's in his writing.

As media critic, perhaps it's time for Kurtz to get out of the Washington Beltway, head on over to the Heartland and see for himself why the media has become the substitute word for "whore," and that was before Gannon/Guckert incident.

Sincerely,