No, it did happen!

After a Libertarian Girl who is not a girl - which pales into comedy of course compared to this - comes a reporter who is not a reporter, working for a news organization that is not a news organization. At least not really. His job? Lobbing softball questions at White House news briefings "intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents." All this in 2004 - election year, though he was still at work till it all came out a week or so ago. Sounds improbable? It did happen! Read this piece on the topic at the New York Times.

And it also turns out he is not Jeff Gannon as the White House thought but James D Guckert. Or did the White House know better after all? All this after it turned out that other journalists were paid money to plug the administrations policies, as the article points out. Is anyone surprised?

The article raises at least one important point:

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).

In fact, I would say it is not just the administration but also the right blogosphere which is involved in this effort. Sounds like a conspiracy theory - well it must be one that has occurred to many people.