Conservative blogger and former male escort Jeff Gannon, who was ousted from the White House press corps after allegations arose that he was planted there by President Bush, discussed his controversial past Wednesday night in an event hosted by the Columbia Political Union.

In 2005, Gannon found himself at the center of a media firestorm after he stood up at a press conference and asked President Bush a question that slammed Senate Democrats, and included false information about then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Media Matters, a national media watchdog group, called the question a “softball” and suggested Gannon’s possible ties with the White House.

“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Gannon told an audience of about 30 at the Faculty House.

At the time, Gannon was serving as the White House correspondent for two conservative Web sites—Talon News and GOPUSA—both of which are owned by a Texas Republican activist and Bush supporter.

At Wednesday’s event, Gannon denied that he had been planted in the press corps, and blamed the accusations on a “left-leaning” press.

“There is a move to keep conservatives out of the mainstream media,” Gannon told David Eisenbach, the history professor who moderated the discussion. “You have, in essence, a war going on in the media with liberals trying to keep control of it and conservatives are trying to get a piece of it.”

Gannon said that the “liberal media” was so desperate to silence him that it began looking to his personal life for artillery. With this, Gannon referred to several liberal bloggers who exposed naked pictures of him that had been posted on a number of Washington gay escort Web sites.

“I’m a casualty of the great media war,” Gannon said. “My personal life has nothing to do with my professional life.” But some bloggers suggested otherwise, asking whether Gannon’s relationship with the White House was somehow connected with his job as an escort.

Eisenbach jokingly asked Gannon about those claims. “There was no torrid affair with Karl Rove?” Eisenbach asked.

“I wish,” Gannon said. “I’d have a more interesting book.”

Gannon’s new book, The Great Media War: A Battlefield Report addresses those claims and others. He calls it his side of the story about how he was driven out of the White House.

The event was an installment of the “Friendly Fire Series,” a lecture series that Eisenbach and the CPU launched last year to encourage free speech on campus.

“I want to bring a diversity of opinions to Columbia,” Eisenbach said. “Gannon’s got an interesting story.”

Kate Linthicum can be reached at kate.linthicum@columbiaspectator.com.