Gannon on NPC Panel

Jeff Gannon just keeps stepping in it. Today JimmyJeff participated in a National Press Club panel with Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette), Matthew Yglesias, Garrett Graff (Fishbowl DC) and others. In this little segment, Cox, Graff and Yglesias pummel Gannon with questions that poor Jeff's unable to answer.

Garrett Graff, the first blogger to get WH press credentials, said it "took the president of the WH correspondents association sitting down and having a meeting, to get me in."—something Jeff didn't do. Instead, Gannon claims, he got in "the old-fashioned way, I called up and I persevered"* but can't recall how long it took or when he first got in. Hm. If he paid attention to the news, he'd know he got in weeks before Talon News, an offshoot of GOPUSA, existed. That would mean that before he even had a job as a operative reporter, he tried for weeks to get access to the White House briefing room, which is not an easy thing to do. No, clearly, Gannon was not a plant.

Watch a distilled version of the National Press Club panel discussion here.

UPDATE (sort of): On his blog, Gannon elaborated on a couple of issues addressed by the panel, but not on, you know, the glaring one noted above. His blog doesn't have permanent links or anything, so there's no URL for the post. If you're interested in reading Gannon, his ruminations can be found here (for fun, read his "questions not asked" in the right-hand column).

*In an earlier version of this post, I quoted Gannon as saying, "the old-fashioned way, perseverance." And no, the irony of correcting a Gannon quote is not lost on me.