Can We Just All Be Human One Saturday Morning? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
AP memorializes Tony Snow thus:
With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but part of why Tony was such a force was because he really shook up the press office in terms of getting facts to the American people. Americans didn't know about successes on the ground in Iraq and they ought to, was Snow's attitude. At the time, it seemed new thinking.
So the AP gets points this morning in the nasty, unnecessary, and off categories.
The New York Times, Inappropriate And Inaccurate
In its obituary for Tony Snow, the New York Times takes this mild shot at a man who just died:
At the White House, he turned the daily press briefing into something of a one-man show, challenging reporters’ questions and delivering hard-hitting answers, even when he was occasionally short on the facts.
Just four paragraphs later, they include this paragraph (since corrected):
During Mr. Bush’s 2006 re-election campaign, Mr. Snow raised eyebrows by using his celebrity to raise money for Republican candidates — something that by Mr. Snow’s own admission, other press secretaries had declined to do for fear of seeming too partisan.
Um, the President was re-elected in 2004. Who, exactly, is "short on the facts"? This from a newspaper that has 12 corrections this morning.
AI
