UPDATED: Why the Village is so mad at Nico Pitney

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

Yesterday I noted the hypocrisy of the WashPost's Dana Milbank swooping in with an indignant column just hours after the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney asked a question at a WH press, yet in 2005 Milbank showed no indignation following the news that Jeff Gannon was waved into the GOP WH nearly 200 times without proper credentials to ask softball questions.

Milbank never wrote about the Gannon caper.

After I posted the item, several people noted that in 2005 Milbank did appear on MSNBC's “Countdown” to talk about the Gannon controversy, so it wasn't like he ignored the story altogether.

But I still think the double standard is blatantly obvious and here's why. Nine times out of ten the way those TV bookings work is the show's producers come up with the topic and then ask guests to comment, which is what I assume happened in the case of Milbank/Gannon. Meaning, it was MSNBC's idea to highlight the controversy, not Milbank's.

And secondly, if Milbank truly thought the idea of the Bush White House completely rigging the WH press room rules for a GOP partisan was objectionable, than he would have written about it in the Washington Post. But he never did, even though the Gannon story unfolded over a period of several weeks. Therefore, I can only assume that Milbank didn't think the Bush era media controversy was that big of a deal. Yet within minutes of Pitney appearing inside the WH press room, Milbank sprang into action to denounce the "“planted question” and the “prepackaged entertainment” that unfolded there.

UPDATE: According to an NPR report about the Pitney kerfuffle:

Milbank raised similar questions about apparent collusion during the Bush administration when a pro-Republican blogger who wrote under the name Jeff Gannon showed up routinely in the White House press room and was allowed to ask questions that took a clearly conservative line.

That's wildly misleading. Milbank never once raised questions about Gannon in the WashPost. Milbank only commented on the story when MSNBC asked him to.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent provides additional context in terms of Milbank's sudden concern for White House stagecraft. Two words: Mission Accomplished.