OK…is there anybody out there who buys “Fair and Balanced” now?
I liked it when Dennis Miller was on MNF.
No surprise at all. Snow never told the truth anyway, so what’s the difference? He’s always been a partisan shill, so in a way, this will be a more honest representation of it.
The Snow Job did not accept the gig right away, the job responsibilities and the pay cut gave him pause, I suspect he is aware of the very likely indictments coming up.
But since according to the WP “officials assured him that he would be not just a spokesman but an active participant in administration policy debates” I guess he thinks he will have some control on what he has to defend, good luck with that Tony.
I’m not sure what a talk show host being hired as a press secretary proves.
It’s far from the first time that a “journalist” (however one defines that term) has moved from a news job to press secretary (or vice versa). One of Clinton’s press secretaries (Dee Dee Myers) went to work as a commentator for MSNBC, which doesn’t qualify MSNBC as a nest of lefties.
Why on earth would Tony Snow take this gig on the sinking ship known as the USS White House? The shit is going to be hitting the fan for the forseeable future, and the WH press secretary is the one who is going to be forced to defend the indefensible. Maybe they could outsource the job to India.
I don’t need any more evidence to convince me that Fox news is heavily biased. Which is good, because thats not what this is. Bush needs someone with media experience. Fox may lack journalistic integrity, but as a media corporation, no one can deny that it’s extremely succesful, which means that this guy is good at his job. And White House press secretary is a plum position. The fact that GW is in a tailspin makes it all the more attractive. If he can turn that around, after 2008 he can take any job he wants and fill out his own paycheck. And even if he can’t, it’s still going to look massively impressive on his resume. It might also position him for a lucrative run on the lecture circuit.
Yes, he’s a conservative running Fox news. That, in and of itself, is not evidence of bias, no more than the liberal politics of other news executives is evidence of bias at their networks. A responsible journalist works to keep those biases out of his reporting. Wether Snow has done that at Fox is a seperate debate.
Suck the right dick, kiss the right ass, tongue the right anus, and you too can get a lucrative position as a consultant when your time in the barrel is finished.
Would you go through three years of absolute hell to have a secure position for the rest of your life?
-Joe
And here I thought there was some intersection between the administration and Broadway.
Like maybe Bush won an award for his work in “How To Succees In Business Without Really Trying”.
Shows what I know.
I asked the same thing about Jim Lehrer’s News Hour on PBS the day David Gergen took a position in the Clinton Administration.
Feh, big deal. Prior to the run of PR flacks having the job journalists did it fairly often. Given that fact it’s not a surprise that the administration should hire a righty journalist.
Non-story.
Didn’t Snow work in the Bush I administration? Just another legacy appointment from what I can see,
The PR pool revolves in and out of political spokesperson jobs. High profile journalists have personal political involvements. The key is that certain behaviour is expected of someone when they’re wearing their Journalist Hat.
As an example, Bush 43’s Karen Hughes was in journalism/PR before joining Bush in Texas.
And that Stephanopolopogus guy from WJC 42 was a POTUS staffer before he went to work in the media.
And I seem to recall Rather doing high profile Democratic Party fundraisers “off the clock” … any suggestions that this compromised Rather’s “objectivity” raised indignation in the press.
Many, many more of those “objective reporters” register as Democrats … and yet they form the nucleus of the mainstream media.
Havig said that, I don’t find the FNN bias at all off. Journalistic neutrality is mythology for the most part anyway. Whatever your bias, there is a mass media provider that projects up your alley. If you swing left, there’s Air America, and large chunks of NPR. Other bits of NPR and the public media swing either center or left-of-center. Mother Jones swings far left. CNN has its’ left-swing moments, as have the old trinity (ABC/NBC/CBS).
I do find, though, FNN’s constant harping on about “Fair and Balanced” to be a crock. The precise value of FNN is that it covers a perspective that the other sources lack, and an intelligent media consumer doesn’t rely on just one source of information. FNN’s constant yammering “Fair and Balanced” has worked to the point of trumpeting the lack of objectivity of FNN, which is a good thing.
A balanced diet of media is just like a nice bowl of Neopolitan ice cream: Left(Strawberry)l, Center(Vanilla) and Chocolate(Right).
There is also a distinction between people acting in an objective reporting mode and a subjective editorial mode.
I’m not too worried about this. He’ll be more fodder for folks on the left, he’ll get a pass from folks on the right, and the world will continue as it has for years.
Daniel
Cite?
I don’t watch Fox (or any other regular Network) News, so I don’t know this guy from Adam. Still, it’s at least somewhat admirable to see someone take a paycut to move into a government service job that could theoretically make him less hireable than he was before. Maybe he’s a total lying jerk*, but, really, who do you expect? Bush needs some serious spin right now, have you seen his numbers?
*Not my position, just a possibility.
I’m more surprised that anybody would accept this job. Gotta be one of the worst ones in the world.
Why does every fucking thing always turn into a “but Clinton” ???
Just pointing out the bias in your argument, my dear.
I don’t know, but iirc Gergen was editor of US New and World Report when he took the Clinton gig, and an avowed Republican. He saw it as his civic duty to answer when his president called, even if he didn’t agree with him on every issue.