The widening payola scandal, which began in earnest with revelations that right-wing pundit Armstrong Williams was paid by the Bush administration to promote its education policies, picked up steam this last week when similar arrangements came to light involving conservative columnists Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus and their support of Bush’s $300 million marriage initiative. The controversy surrounding Bush’s possibly illegal use of public funds for propaganda purposes has forced the president to publicly order his cabinet secretaries to stop paying off members of the media, and has raised troubling questions about the government’s appropriation of what is supposed to be an independent press.

The payola scandal has emerged in the wake of other disturbing incidents in which the Bush administration has violated federal law by using government money to pay for fake news segments promoting its Medicare prescription drug program and pushing its views on the evils of youth drug abuse. And now it's being reported that the White House has given press credentials to a fake “news organization” so that a fake “journalist” can ask loaded pro-Bush questions during press briefings. The “news organization” in question, Talon News, is run by editor-in-chief Bobby Eberle, who is also president and CEO of GOPUSA, a right-wing political organization. Talon News appears to be little more than a front for GOPUSA: it has no physical news room or office, and many of the “news” articles appearing on its web site are actually introductory paragraphs linked to articles from the GOPUSA web site. Its sparse “staff” includes a handful of Republican activists, most notably Talon’s White House “correspondent,” who goes by the name “Jeff Gannon.” Eberle and “Gannon” are both regular posters on the radical right-wing forum, Free Republic, and “Gannon” has also hosted a talk show on the companion site, Radio Free Republic. “Gannon” refers to himself on his personal web site as "a conservative journalist embedded with the liberal Washington press corps," where he recently advised his “liberal colleagues” that “Bush is here for another 4 years. Get over it!”

“Jeff Gannon,” who has accused his press corps colleagues of "work[ing] off of the [Democratic] talking points,” has developed his own reputation for dubious journalistic integrity. He has been caught using press releases and other documents from the Bush administration and the Republican party in his "news" articles, quoting them verbatim and without attribution. He has even plagiarized Rush Limbaugh, using one of Limbaugh’s false assertions in a question that he asked Bush during his Jaunuary 26 press conference.

“Gannon” is best known for lobbing verbal softballs over the plate at press briefings to take the heat off his pal, White House press secretary Scott McClellan:

“Gannon” has also garnered a lot of attention for himself by tossing up a gimmee to President Bush during his recent press conference:

But wait, it gets goofier. A few of the regulars over at Daily Kos have been researching the background of “Jeff Gannon,” and have discovered that the name he reports under as a White House correspondent is a pseudonym. The White House is apparently aware of this, and has given him his credentials under his pseudonym even though married female reporters who use their maiden names professionally are required to take credentials with their married names. Even more curiously, “Gannon’s” journalistic background prior to his first appearance on the web in late 2002 and meteoric rise to the White House Press Corps, appears to consist of a two-day seminar at the Leadership Institute for Broadcasting Journalism, a training camp for right-wing pundits with extensive ties to anti-union groups.

And if all that weren’t enough to set alarm bells off in your head, “Jeff Gannon” is apparently a key figure in the Valerie Plame outing. “Gannon” was cited by the Washington Post as having sole access to an internal CIA memo that identified Plame as a covert CIA operative, and referred to the memo in an October 2003 interview with Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson. He has been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury investigating the Plame outing.

Taken as a whole, the payola scandal, illegal fake news segments, and the bizarre “Jeff Gannon” affair all demonstate a pattern of subterfuge and corruption that is perhaps unprecedented in scope and severity, painting an Orwellian picture of the Bush PR machine. Could “Propagandagate” be the straw that breaks the back of the Bush administration?

Hat Tips: Media Matters for America, Daily Kos