The Washington Blade named Kevin Naff as its editor this week following Executive Editor Chris Crain’s departure, and one of the first things on Naff’s agenda was to clean out some old dross, namely former White House hooker/fake news correspondent Jeff Gannon.
Naff told Fishbowl DC that it wasn’t Gannon’s conservative ideology that got him fired:
“I made the decision…Basically, my concern is that he has a huge credibility problem, for obvious reasons, and if a member of my staff lied about their identity, lied about their name, lied to their editors, lied to their sources, I would fire them. I wouldn’t publish them.
And this has nothing to do with his political beliefs. Our op-ed pages will always be open to members of the community of all political stripes. I will be reaching out to different conservative voices to get those folks inside the paper…Their views will be reflected in our pages, but I just think we can find better people to represent those views.”
Former editor Crain had been criticized for what was seen as right-wing bias at the paper after he allegedly killed a story outing RNC chair Ken Mehlman and turned down an opportunity to hear evidence of anti-gay Congressman Ed Schrock’s public messages on a gay sex personals phone site because he didn’t believe in invading someone’s privacy. His hiring of Gannon didn’t do much to stem the criticism. Crain also made headlines when he and his boyfriend were the victims of a gay bashing in Amsterdam in 2005.
