Jeff Gannon

Members of Code Pink, the radical antiwar and terrorist-supporting group may not be permitted to enter the Nation Press Club premises, but their protest of Vice President Dick Cheney made The Record anyway. Over the past few years, members of Code Pink have disrupted public and private events at the Club, but their antics seem irresistable to the press.

In March of this year, members of Code Pink rioted during a press conference hosted by a pro-troop group, Move America Forward. At a breakfast program with guest speaker Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Code Pink members shouted demands for him to resign. One demonstrator tried to handcuff herself to a chair to prevent her removal.

In other venues I have discussed Code Pink and its long history of subversion and ties to terrorists and repressive regimes around the world. One of the group’s founders, Jodie Evans is a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Yet the press that appears so eager to amplify the message Code Pink hopes to convey with their outrageous and sometimes violent behavior is loathe to do any investigative reporting about what the group actually represents. The ladies in pink are not harmless “peace” activists but until the media does its job Americans will be unaware of the threat they pose.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club may stand as the pivotal moment in the 2008 presidential elections. The controversial pastor of a church that Barack Obama attended for 20 years unleashed a torrent of preposterous statements in response to questions from the national press that perhaps doomed his congregant’s candidacy.

Before an audience stacked with supporters and about one dozen noted leftist radicals, Wright professed support for the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and reiterated his belief that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus to exterminate blacks. He bashed Vice President Dick Cheney for not having served in the military and sending young men and women to “die for a lie.” Wright criticized Oliver North for aiding the Contras against the pro-Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua more than two decades ago.

Wright ranted at the press for having the temerity to query him and several times disrespected the “white girl,” NPC Vice President Donna Leinwand who read the questions. Wright’s “audacity of hate” diatribe sent shockwaves across the political landscape.

New York Daily News writer Errol Lewis perceived Wright’s performance so damaging to Obama that he suggested the National Press Club conspired to derail the Illinois senator’s campaign. He posited that Speakers Committee member Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, a Hillary Clinton supporter hoped to help her choice by giving Wright a platform to spout his divisive “black liberation theology.”

Such an assertion is nonsense and an insult to the National Press Club and its membership. NPC’s core mission is to promote the free press and facilitate access to elected officials, public policy makers and other influential figures. Rev. Wright certainly qualifies as such a person. In the national spotlight given to him, Wright produced an abundance of valuable information for substance-starved political news consumers.

The National Press Club should do more events of this nature, regardless of the outcome. While I bristled when serial liars Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame received a hero’s welcome at the Club, at least the working press had a chance to question them, however uncritically it did so. I strongly believe that every President of the United States should address the Club each year. It would probably provide a fairer forum than that the ideologically homogenous White House Press Corps.

The venerable National Press Club, now celebrating its centennial has clearly demonstrated why it endures. Even in a rapidly changing media universe, the basic journalism equation remains the same: asking questions and getting answers.

With Rev. Wright, “mission accomplished!”