I kept meaning to do something on this earlier, but kept forgetting. Leave it to Howard Kurtz to remind me. From Kurtz's column:
The Fishbowl DC guy, emulating Jeff Gannon, finally got a day pass into the White House and filed his first reports. Sounds like he could barely stay awake.
"We'd been warned by a regular White House correspondent over the weekend that the 'zoo' of the briefing would likely leave us knowing less and being more confused than when went in. Having sat through it now, we have to agree."
But InstaPundit strikes a skeptical note:
"Garrett Graff is vice president of communications at EchoDitto, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based technology consulting firm. A Vermont native, he served formerly as deputy national press secretary on Howard Dean's presidential campaign and, beginning in 1997, was then-Governor Dean's first webmaster.
"A partisan PR guy disguised as a 'real journalist!' He's even a 'dittohead!' Somebody tell Kos. I'm sure he'll be right on it. . . . "
Garrett (a) does not work for Howard Dean or any partisan affliated company now; (b) has been totally up front about the fact that he's Dean's former assistant press secretary, even to the point of mentioning it as one reason why it's bizarre that he couldn't get White House security clearance immediately having gotten it before.
Comparing Garrett to Jeff Gannon is intellectually dishonest. (I actually assumed Glenn was being ironic when he wrote that, but maybe I read it incorrectly.) Gannon went in as part of a partisan organization. Mediabistro is not partisan, and Garrett is not acting as a partisan reporter as part of mb. Nor is Echoditto a partisan organization. (It's a for-profit online community consulting company.) The most Kurtz (or anyone) can complain about is that Garrett has a documented political opinion. And any journalist who voted in the last election (Mr. Kurtz?) can't have a problem with that.
The difference between Kurtz and Garrett is that Garrett doesn't have the luxury of denying that he has an opinion and implying that he or she has a superior claim on "objectivity" as a result.
Posted by Elizabeth Spiers at March 8, 2005 11:52 PM