[Howard Kurtz, Host:] War in the blogosphere. With X-rated pictures of former White House reporter Jeff Gannon hitting the Internet and reverberations over their campaign against high- profile television types, bloggers themselves come under scrutiny. Are they a powerful mechanism for fact-checking the mainstream media or a new form of vigilante justice? One step closer to jail. An appeals court rules against "TIME's" Matt Cooper and "The New York Times' " Judith Miller for the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. We'll ask Cooper why protecting administration officials is worth risking a prison term. And just a blip: how local TV is tuning out politics.
[Kurtz:] Welcome to RELIABLE SOURCES, where today we turn our critical lens on the growing power of bloggers. I'm Howard Kurtz, part-time blogger. In the wake of several controversies involving high-profile media figures, the debate has shifted to the people, more than eight million of them, who post their opinions online. Are there any rules? How personal is too personal? Are bloggers becoming a thriving alternative to the mainstream media or just a collection of carping critics who live to slam the news outlets, anchors and reporters they don't like? Joining me now in Minneapolis is John Hinderaker, a lawyer and one of the founders of PowerlineBlog.com. He was one of the first to question the National Guard documents used by Dan Rather in that discredited "60 Minutes" piece on President Bush's military service. And here in Washington, John Aravosis, political consultant and the man behind AmericaBlog.org. He helped uncover graphic details of Jeff Gannon's background that received wide coverage in the stories about the online reporter who had been covering the White House. And Jacki Schechner, a journalist who specialized in covering blogs. Welcome. John Aravosis, you posted some X-rated pictures of Jeff Gannon from what were obviously gay escort sites. He'd already quit his job reporting for these two conservative Web sites, Talon News and GOPUSA. Why put up the pictures after the fact?
[John Aravosis, Americablog.org:] We put up the pictures because the issue really wasn't whether Jeff Gannon had been working with escort services. The issue was how Jeff Gannon, what we would consider a fake journalist with fake credentials, got into the White House to report fake news. And the issue of whether he was an escort came to the larger issue of who was this guy and how could he get regular access to the White House for two years, access to the president, and reportedly, according to him, access to classified information regarding Valerie Plame.
[Kurtz:] Gannon, or James Guckert, which is his real name, is now defending himself. He says yes, he's made mistakes in the past, but why should that disqualify him from being a journalist? Why shouldn't he be able to move on, change his life and pursue a journalistic route, just like bloggers practice journalism, as well, without any license?
[Aravosis:] Right. I don't think it necessarily does disqualify him from being a journalist. The question is, was he acting as a journalist? A lot of folks feel that he wasn't even reporting news. He was reporting press releases and talking points from Republicans verbatim, that it was really a Republican advocacy site and not a news site. But as I said, for us there is the larger issue of who was this guy, should he have been in the White House, should he have had access to the president? Was he a plant? We don't know.
[Kurtz:] John Hinderaker, do you think that Jeff Gannon has been treated fairly by the blogging community? And what about this question of should he have had access to the White House? Yes, he's a self-described conservative reporter, but there's some liberal reporters at the White House as well.
[John Hinderaker, Powerlineblog.com:] Howard, I think this is an absolute outrage. The idea of these people posting those photographs, I mean, it is pure, flat out gay-baiting. I think it is contemptible. And the idea that Jeff Gannon is somehow not a real reporter, I don't know what a real reporter is. It's not like there's a test that you have to take. There was a survey done a few years ago that indicated that about 90 percent of the White House press corps consists of Democrats. And the impression I get is that the folks on the left think it's a scandal that it's not 100 percent. You know, this guy has a right to be pro-administration, just like Helen Thomas, for example, has got a right to be anti- administration.
[Kurtz:] Do you want to briefly respond to this?
[Hinderaker:] And he represented an online news service, so I think it is an attack on him.
[Aravosis:] Yes. I mean, you know, right. I mean, the gay- baiting is a cute line that the right likes to throw out there. I mean, as a gay man who's been working on gay issues for years, I wish there were more people on the right who claimed to care about gay issues. But we have an administration here that goes out of its way to bash gays, whether it's the marriage amendment or what. And then we've got a writer like Jeff Guckert or I can't even get his name right anymore; nobody can who writes anti-gay articles and then wants the protection of saying, "Oh, I'm a gay man." The bottom line is we had a hooker in the White House talking to the president two weeks ago, and if that president's name was Bill Clinton, it would be people like John and others who rightfully would say, "What's this guy doing there?"
[Kurtz:] All right. Well, he can Gannon denies running anti- gay articles. But I want to broaden the conversation. Now Jacki Schechner, you follow this for a living. How typical are these kind of tactics in the blogosphere, these brass-knuckle tactics where it gets really personal? And in your view, does it go too far?
[Jacki Schechner, Blog Reporter:] Well, I think what they're covering is information. And I think when you're looking for something, I think it was Wolf Blitzer who asked him about these Web sites. And Jeff Gannon said, "Oh, I don't know. I set them up for a client." That sort of thing. He wasn't forthcoming with that sort of information. And then John went out and found the information. I mean, there is some credibility that comes along with being a journalist. You know, John in Minneapolis was saying that, you know, "What does it mean to be a journalist? I don't know who a reporter is." Well, you know what? You earn your credibility. You earn your honesty. You become a trusted source. So I think there is some level, and especially, I would imagine that to cover the White House beat, you'd have to have some sort of background behind you, and some level of credibility and honesty.
[Kurtz:] All right. Well, now, after several of these high- profile media controversies in which bloggers have played a key role, Steve Lovelady of "Columbia Journalism Review" had this to say: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." And then he wrote, "The Captain Eds, Jay Rosens and Jeff Jarvises of this world have always celebrated the blogosphere as a self- correcting perfect democracy where the participants supply accountability and oversight. The other side of that coin is to say that the mob is headless." John Aravosis, do you plead guilty of being at least a member of the mob?
[Aravosis:] Which mob? You know, there was a mob that took over the Bastille in 1789, as well. I mean, which mob are we talking about? It doesn't necessarily make you wrong. And I'll go maybe even farther than John might go. You know, it wasn't a mob that took Dan Rather down. Dan Rather's mistakes took Dan Rather down. Eason Jordan at CNN's mistakes well, don't mean to bring it up, but you know, brought him down. What brought James Gannon down was his own mistakes. And the reason that the White House is being questioned now is the White House let him in. We need to know about their mistakes.
[Kurtz:] So John Hinderaker, is it now bloggers like yourself and your online brethren who are taking on this kind of self-appointed role of holding news organizations accountable? And do you feel that there's a lot of resistance to this in the old dinosaur, mainstream media?
[Hinderaker:] Well, there certainly is, Howard. I mean, the reaction of some of the mainstream commentators to the Eason Jordan story was completely over the top. First of all, the mainstream media, for the most part, completely blew that story. Second, they were take surprise by surprise when Jordan resigned, or I suppose was forced out by CNN. And some of them lashed out at the bloggers with these ridiculous quotes like the one that you read. Look, the fact is, I didn't fire Eason Jordan. CNN fired Eason Jordan. And what the bloggers did was to bring to light what Eason Jordan did and what he said. He repeatedly, not just once, but repeatedly, made unsubstantiated accusations against the United States military. CNN decided, apparently, that that was enough to cost him his job.
[Kurtz:] Well...
[Hinderaker:] To try to blame the bloggers for that, I think, is ridiculous.
[Kurtz:] Just for the record, you know, Eason Jordan resigned. He was not fired. But on the other hand, there was this question about the videotape, which we still haven't seen, of what he actually said, which would have made this story easier for everybody to cover. When bloggers are pounding away at somebody, pounding them into the pavement there's even this phrase now, bloglust. Is that part of a healthy debate? Or if you're on the receiving end of the pounding, it probably seems pretty unfair.
[Schechner:] I think you take it as far as the story goes. I mean, I really think as a journalist or as a writer, as a reporter, as a blogger, the idea is to incorporate as much communication as possible. It was the PressThink blog that we looked at the other day, Jay Rosen at NYU, was talking about the way to sort of combat this is not to excommunicate but to mass communicate. And I think we're just looking for more information. I mean, you and I know from mainstream media, you have TV and you have newspaper. And you have a certain amount of inches that you're allowed to write in. And you have a certain amount of time that your package can air or your piece can be on. So you have to be an editor, or you have an editor who says to you, "These are the things that are important. These are the things that..."
[Kurtz:] Today, tomorrow, next week.
[Schechner:] It changes all the time.
[Kurtz:] Right.
[Schechner:] But you only have a certain amount of information you can get in. You run a blog, you can go on forever. And you're your own editor, because there are really no rules yet, and there probably won't be, because frankly, it's the Internet. And so they can say as much as they want and as much time as they want. You can get in as much information as you think is pertinent to the story.
[Kurtz:] Just to give us a sense of how this works, John Aravosis, how were you able to dig out the naked truth about Jeff Gannon? Is it because the mainstream press shies away from sex stories, or is it because you have technological tools that didn't exist even a few years ago?
[Aravosis:] No, I was able to get the story out with the technological tools. I was able to get the story by basically being a good journalist. I mean, I've been writing for years on a number of issues. I've written for "The Economist." My name has been out there on gay issues. And frankly, somebody had this story. They asked their friends out in California, "Who should I call?" And they said, "You know, you ought to call Aravosis. We trust him." I would put that in the journalist category. But I think going back to what Jacki said, she raises a very good point in that there has to be some self-regulation. I think in politics especially, once you're getting the bad guy, you can get too wrapped up in it. And I think I certainly worry about that. I hope John worries about it. And I think we all have to worry about just controlling ourselves a little, sure.
[Kurtz:] Well, John Hinderaker, how did you how are you able to raise those questions so quickly about CBS'National Guard documents? You're not a typography expert, I presume?
[Hinderaker:] Well, that's exactly right, Howard. In fact, we've told this story many times. The information that we put out during the day on, I think it was September 9th of last year, all came from our readers. It was in several categories. Some had to do with typography. Some had to do with military protocol. Some had to do with the contents of the documents, which were wrong in various respects. All the information came from our readers. Our role was to sift through it, identify what seemed to be the most interesting and the most reliable and sometimes where there were conflicts...
[Kurtz:] OK.
[Hinderaker:] ... we published both sides. And put it out before the audience.
[Kurtz:] All right. Ten-second answer. Does the blogosphere need some kind of code of conduct? Or is that unrealistic when you have so many people doing it all the time?
[Schechner:] I think Peggy Noonan had it right. It's self- regulating. I mean, I think that bloggers will check each other. I think that there's a need to keep the blogosphere honest, and bloggers want that.
[Kurtz:] And if they're found not to be honest, then they will just lose the ability to draw people to their site?
[Schechner:] For lack of a better term, I think they'll eat their own. I really do.
[Kurtz:] Well, on that delicate note there, we're going to end the discussion. Jacki Schechner, John Aravosis, John Hinderaker in Minneapolis, thank you very much for joining us. Just ahead, one step closer to jail for two reporters in connection with the Valerie Plame leak investigation. We'll speak to one of them, "TIME's" Matt Cooper, about the latest developments and a "Chicago Tribune" columnist who thinks journalists don't deserve special protection.