Pierre Salinger was Paris bureau chief and chief European correspondent for ABC News.
How is that a commentary position?
Bill Moyers’ most significant work for CBS News was in long-form documentaries and interviews. Again, this is not commentary, as the opinion of Bill Boyers isn’t supposed to be germane to what is being reported.
George Stephanopoulos is listed as the ABC News chief Washington correspondent. Again, is this supposed to be a commentary position? Formerly this position was held by David Brinkley, who never worked in any kind of political role for the government.
Can someone keeping score point out which of the figures being discussed went from working for a for-profit “news” organization to being a literal mouthpiece for the White House?
What difference does it make if it’s not precisely the same move? Everyone who works in an administration has to support the President’s agenda. And since the spokesperson isn’t involved in policy making decisions, he’s always going to have to speak for things he doesn’t support personally.
Besides, the move from news → government is less disturbing than the move in the opposite direction. All reporters have their own opinions, but as long as they keep them to themselves, we can at least hope they are working on some level of objectivity. If we know where there allegiance lies, then how are we to view their reporting?
I’m not changing the subject. Someone mentioned Salinger and Moyers as examples of men who became respected commentators after being White House press secretaries. I was just pointing out that this wasn’t universal. Neither man was a saint.
The subject comes up again with regard to Snow, and the double standard some are willing to apply to him. They will assume that, since he is being considered for a job in the administration, that his inpartiality and that of his network is suspect. Yet it is somehow out of line to apply the same standard to Democrats who go to work for broadcast networks, or the networks that hire them.
It’s about the same imho. It doesn’t matter if you are questioning their past stories or their present stories. Both cause one to question the objectivity of the reporter, and that’s a very bad thing.
Again, I regard the move from government to the press, especially the supposedly “objective” role of a reporter, as worse, only because the press has a pretense of objectivity that can be called into question by the reporters very public past allegiances.
And while there is a somewhat fuzzy line between commentary and reportage, positions like those held by Moyers and especially Salinger in the 1970’s and 1980’s were supposed to be positions of objective reporting, or at least that is how they were sold to the public.
True, but let’s differentiate between “anchors” and “reporters”. I think you’re talking about anchors. When I see Dan Rather or whoever reporting a story in which Suzie Que is the “Whitehouse Correspondent”, I’m more concernead about Suzie Que’s objectivity than Dan’s. In the same way, I’m more concerned about a newspaper reporter’s objectivity than I am about the editor. You’d like to think both are as objective as possible, but the reporter is the primary source-- if he or she doesn’t get it right, then no one along the chain can make up for that.
This is just my humble opinion, but reporting has just become another stepping stone career. The local reporter wants to be the local anchor wants to be the national reporter wants to be the national anchor wants to be the news magazine host wants to have their own show on CNN/Fox/MSNBC and a best selling book.
Now I’ll step off of my soapbox. Heights give me nosebleeds.
Not gone at all. This “move” of Rove is just made to look like Bush has shaken up more than he has. I’m sure he was always going to be more involved in the fall '06 campaigns, and I have no doubts that if he wants to contribute to policy-making in the future, he can.
Nope. This is another non-move closer to scraping off the bumper sticker of a band you’re no longer interested or getting new fuzzy dice instead of fixing that muffler that has long since fallen off. Rove has lost none of his influence within the administration. He’s just found something different to occupy his free time.
Tony Snow most certainly does not keep it to himself. I recall seeing him on Bill Maher’s show, where he pulled no punches as far as being a Bush apologist.
If it were my news outfit, I wouldn’t allow my purportedly neutral correspondents and anchors to do opinion commentary, but that’s just me.
Is he supposed to be a neutral correspondent? I thought the only really neutral guy on Fox TV was Shep Smith, whose show is a news show (as opposed to someone like O’Reilly which is pure commentary).
