Tuesday, April 05, 2005

The DesMoinesRegister declares war on blugs

Johnny Gosch may finally have been found, thanks to Rush Limbaugh.

The Iowa paperboy was kidnapped in 1982, with unsubstantiated stories emerging later from his mother that he was abducted into a child pedophilia ring. No trace of him has ever been found, and no suspects have been arrested.

Nearly 23 years later, White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, who wrote for a conservative Web site, was exposed in February as James D. Guckert, a man with no journalism experience and links to several gay escort addresses online.
...
But here's how the Internet can feed a rumor until a bunch of people actually believe it.

The Gannon-Gosch conspiracy theory first appeared on the message board of a liberal political site called The Democratic Underground on Feb. 26. A site regular, using the name TwoSparkles, speculated that Jeff Gannon was victimized by a government-organized child pornography ring.

Then he foreshadowed the future with this note: "I found this picture of Johnny Gosch. I looked at it and almost thought it looked like Gannon! It must be getting late." The image was a school picture of Gosch taken in the 1980s and later enhanced.

The same poster noted that Gannon/Guckert and Gosch had the same initials. Before long, other site members were trying to figure out whether the ages matched. (In fact, there would be more than 10 years' age difference between Gannon and Gosch.)

Full-blown details came from several popular Web conspiracy theorists. Self-styled political activist Sherman Skolnick, who analyzes political corruption with an evangelical tone, adopted Rense.com as his forum about the Gosch-Gannon/Guckert link.

Then the story was dropped into dozens of Web sites. Gosch case activist and Denver resident Ted White estimated he posted messages about the connection on 65 or 70 sites.


What a confederacy of wankers. Way down in the 24th 'graph or so, they do let slip that

Coincidentally, Gannon was exposed as Guckert by persistent bloggers. After drawing attention to himself with softball questions and inaccurate quotes, Gannon became a topic on Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show. The bloggers then dug up erotic photos of him and a connection to the escort sites.

But a 2nd tier newspaper coming right out and saying that the great unwashed Googled up a significant story that the official hard pass-carrying press couldn't find with both hands and a flashlight would be unthinkable. So the article is instead about some bizzare fringe theory that this blogaholic had never even seen, much less seriously considered or given a rat's ass about.

Over the next couple of years, stories like these will be as common as Bush hagiographies and breathless "Was (fill in the absurd Biblical story) True?" pieces. The more good journalism bloggers do, the more we embarrass the cheap empty suits who wear that title but do nothing of the sort. In utterly predicatable fashion, the press, of all people, will try to shoot the messenger.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

well, maybe they have a point. i mean, remember that insane rumor that was going around about wmd in iraq? oh...right...never mind.

8:41 AM  

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