Should I even be surprised?

The blogging community has already brought to light the fact that a non-journalist with the pseudonym "Jeff Gannon" has infiltrated the White House press corps. I read about it in a Salon.com article this morning.

As a recent recipient of a master's degree from a highly regarded journalism school, I am just floored by this. How can the right wing continuously complain of liberal bias, when time and again, there is rampant evidence (and here) of right-wing partisan hackery? What kills me is that Talon News - the publication Gannon was supposedly a reporter for - had previously been denied press credentials by Standing Committee of Correspondents. He had been denied because Gannon couldn't prove his "editorial independence" from GOPUSA, which owns Talon. But Gannon was still able to receive one-off press passes each day. Strange.

I remember hearing somewhere that reporters on the White House beat are the laziest, because they don't really have to do any real "reporting" - they just go to press conferences and briefings. After reading this, there's nothing in my mind that persuades me to think otherwise. The honest, ethical, journalistic community is having a hard enough time trying to maintain its credibility in light of media scandals such as this.

If one day we all woke up and found out it was some crazy Howard Stern prank, I swear to Jah, I still wouldn't laugh.