Why?

Why is some of the most astute political reporting available being done by a guy in the Arts section? You'd think those guys in the front section, or the op-ed page, might notice, and 'get some game on'.

Frank Rich puts "Gannongate" in context (New York Times):

Even now, we know that the fake news generated by the six known shills is only a small piece of the administration's overall propaganda effort. President Bush wasn't entirely joking when he called the notoriously meek March 6, 2003, White House press conference on the eve of the Iraq invasion "scripted" while it was still going on. (And "Jeff Gannon" apparently wasn't even at that one). Everything is scripted.

The pre-fab "Ask President Bush" town hall-style meetings held during last year's campaign (typical question: "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?") were carefully designed for television so that, as Kenneth R. Bazinet wrote last summer in New York's Daily News, "unsuspecting viewers" tuning in their local news might get the false impression they were "watching a completely open forum." A Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide propagandistic news items, some of them possibly false, to foreign news media was shut down in 2002 when it became an embarrassing political liability. But much more quietly, another Pentagon propaganda arm, the Pentagon Channel, has recently been added as a free channel for American viewers of the Dish Network. Can a Social Security Channel be far behind?

It is a brilliant strategy. When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.

The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press. Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear). The frequent fecklessness of the Beltway gang does little to penetrate this Washington smokescreen.

Sharp media critic that he is, Rich commends Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" newshour on MSNBC, a program which, as far as I'm concerned, is the only reason for the existence of said channel. Olbermann uses camouflage to hide a real news show with a "Daily Show-esque" awareness of the tropes of TV infotainment. Tucked safely inside a wrapper of "light" news and humor which, I assume, deflects the attention of the Media Bosses, are items like interviews with FDR's grandson on the misuse of his grandfather's words to market Bush's Social Security plan, a story on the terrorism warnings the FAA missed, and another on US military contractors firing on Iraqi civilians. Olbermann sends the message that, yes, there is an entertaining media circus in progress, but meanwhile, there's some serious stuff going on you might want to know. Take a look, if you haven't stumbled upon it already.

Between Frank Rich and Keith Olbermann, it's starting to seem like the front page is the last place to look for the real news.