This originally appeared as a comment I made in response to my post on the "Jeff Gannon" brouhaha.

Help me out here. So Mokhiber should go too? Eric Alterman and David Corn shouldn't be allowed in either? Or anyone representing "The Nation" or "Mother Jones" or "National Review" or "The Weekly Standard"?

So, "Gannon" asks a softball question. Big deal. Scott McClellan is a professional, he's going to get his talking points out there whether or not "Gannon" is in there or not.

Do you really think the journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post and the other major networks were using stuff based on questions asked by this guy? They knew who he was.

I've said repeatedly that most of the journalists in that briefing room are liberal, but that doesn't mean they're stupid or unprofessional. They're not robots, repeating everything said as though it was gospel fact -- especially from "Gannon."

Do a Google News search for "Harry Reid" soup lines and see what's there -- not a single newspaper picked up on that and attributed it to Reid. In fact, every result that search turns up is about how it was a bogus quote.

Most journalists: Liberal, not stupid.

This story continues to have legs over at Editor & Publisher for no particular reason -- the publication still hasn't done anything on the resignation of CNN's Eason Jordan.

"Gannon" is a one day story. That the left side of the blogosphere and the mainstream media's ethics/criticism wing have spent more time on this than Jordan's slander of the American military or even Armstrong Williams unethical behavior demonstrates how seriously out of whack their worldview is.

Which is more important? That the head of the news division of CNN accuses the American military of targeting journalists for death in Iraq with no evidence to back it up or some right-wing quasi-journalist tosses some softballs at White House briefings?