Tony Snow

"It seems long past time for reputable news sites to clamp down on the gutter talk."

That is James Rainey, the "On the Media" critic at the Los Angeles Times, fretting in an article today (Sun., 2/27/11) about the tone of readers' comments that are posted on news web sites.

If Rainey wants to "clamp down on the gutter talk" by readers, he needs to take a closer look at his own employer's site, latimes.com.

CNN's Howard Kurtz on Sunday said an inconvenient truth that few in his industry would care to admit: "Helen Thomas has been saying all kinds of questionable things in [the White House] press room for the past decade, but her colleagues, for the most part, had given her a pass until now."

This indeed is the real lesson behind last week's retirement of the nation's longest living member of the White House press corps: she for years was allowed by her colleagues to regularly get away with what most of them knew was unacceptable behavior.

Interesting that media members are learning this lesson only when one of their own falls from grace. The question is whether or not they'll recognize that they should always be scrutinizing each other's performance in order to maintain the integrity and professionalism key to an industry that is charged with policing government and the politicians that serve our very nation.

This seems especially important given how the same people now admitting they let Thomas get away with media malpractice ignored all journalistic standards during the last presidential campaign and have continued to do so since Barack Obama was inaugurated.

Consider that as you watch Kurtz and his panel discuss the Thomas affair on the opening segment of Sunday's "Reliable Sources" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, full transcript at end of post):  

Disgraced journalist Helen Thomas must now be really proud of herself: the terrorist organization Hezbollah has expressed great praise for the recent anti-Semitic comments she made that forced her into retirement.

As NewsBusters' Ken Shepherd reported last Friday, Thomas told a rabbi that Jews living in Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go "home" to Poland or Germany.

According to Israel's Ynet, a representative of Hezbollah issued a statement Wednesday regarding this matter:

Helen Thomas on Friday asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs why the United States keeps giving iron-clad commitments to Israel when it violates international law?

Gibbs responded during the press briefing, "Well, again, we enjoy a strong relationship with the country and the people. We are committed to their security." 

Giving what the late Tony Snow marvelously referred to as "The Hezbollah View," Thomas challenged the man at the podium, "How about the Palestinian security?" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t HotAirPundit):

One year ago tomorrow, former White House press secretary Tony Snow sadly succumbed to his three-year battle with colon cancer.

To commemorate the anniversary, the Fox News Channel on Sunday will feature respects paid by dignitaries, former co-workers, and Tony Snow fans far and wide.

As reported by TVNewser Friday:

The Associated Press's obituary on Jack Kemp continued two troubling trends found in recent AP death notices.

In July of last year, covering Tony Snow's passing (saved here; covered at NewsBusters here), AP reporters found seemingly everything negative they could think of to write about the former White House press secretary and 2008 Media Research Center Buckley Award winner (examples -- "good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook -- if not always a command of the facts"; "questioned their [reporters'] motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing"; "[he turned] the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation"). The wire service also saw fit to include Snow's salary when he was at the White House.

In a March story about a tragic plane crash in Montana that took 14 lives, including seven young children, the AP just had to tell us that the plane's occupants had been en route to a skiing "retreat for the ultrarich." A later report referred to their destination as the "ritzy Yellowstone Club."

AP's otherwise well-written obituary on Jack Kemp continued both trends.

Recently, Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back while moving boxes, and has been relegated to viewing the inauguration ceremonies from a wheelchair. 

In an article from the AP Monday, come details of what caused the injury:

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Cheney was helping to move into his new home outside Washington in McLean, Va., when he injured his back.

Those who know the propensity of Arianna Huffington's readers to delve into the vile and disgusting know where this is heading.  One only has to review the commentary provided from the Huffington Post forums when Tony Snow was undergoing an operation to ‘remove a growth' from his lower abdomen, to see the depths of her followers.

Here is a small sampling involving the VP:

White House press secretary Dana Perino's last briefing was delicious beyond words...especially her tribute to Tony Snow. Do yourself a favor and click on the embedded video below:

The fallout that began a week ago after the publication of the Associated Press's Tony Snow obituary continues.

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly took his concerns about it to the top of AP, and didn't like the response he received. He shouldn't.

In his column this morning at Townhall.com, he also reaches a conclusion about the self-described "Essential Global News Network" that is becoming increasingly difficult to deny.

After the firestorm that erupted Saturday over the Associated Press's classless story on the death of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, I was hoping that the possibly-chastened wire service could get through its coverage of his funeral without getting in any gratuitous digs.

In that horrid Saturday story (blogged at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog), the AP's Douglass K. Daniel, with the assistance of longtime Bush basher Jennifer Loven, felt it necessary, within hours of Snow's passing, to characterize him as "not always (having) a command of the facts," questioning reporters' motives "as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing," and turning his briefings into "personality-driven media event(s) short on facts and long on confrontation." In a further descent into tastelessness, they felt it necessary to tell us what Snow's salary at the White House was -- something I don't believe I have ever seen written in a story on anyone else's death. (11:00 a.m. update: See this comment below for an exception.)

Covering Snow's funeral Thursday, AP reporter Ben Feller stayed classy almost to the end. But then he apparently couldn't help himself, and followed the execrable example of his Saturday predecessors in his story's third-last paragraph.

When media personality Tim Russert, once a top adviser to leading Democratic officeholders in New York, died of a heart attack in June, editors at YouTube rightly paid tribute to him by promoting videos that celebrated his work and life.

They didn't extend the same courtesy to conservative journalist Tony Snow over the weekend. Instead, YouTube chose to mark Snow's passing by featuring a liberal rant that blamed Snow for "hundreds of thousands of deaths," including those of innocent children, because he briefly served as President Bush's spokesman.

The video was one of two promoted in YouTube's news and politics section after Snow died of cancer at age 53. The first clip, from an interview with White House counselor Ed Gillespie on CBS' "Face The Nation," gave Snow his much-deserved due as "one of the good guys."

But in an apparent and twisted attempt at balance, the second Snow-related clip that YouTube chose was headlined "Tony Snow Job." Here's how it began: 

Tony Snow, who we sadly learned passed away Saturday morning after a battle with cancer, accepted the second annual "William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence" at the MRC's 2008 Gala and DisHonors awards held in Washington, DC on April 10 this year. In one of his last public appearances, Snow praised the MRC and chastised journalists for not appreciating America's greatness:

"I love your determination, I love your creativity, your terrier-like refusal to let the press get away with things that violate the canons of journalism. But while I'm at it, I want to take a moment to talk about what is the most indefensible lapse of all. And we've seen several examples of it tonight. That is, the failure of the press to shake off maybe the greatest bit of laziness that you see often in journalism, it's what I call 'facile cynicism.'

"It's the attitude that, when you look at American life, you look at it with a sense of boredom; you're surrounded by people who are mediocre; the politicians are boring; oh, you look at it with a yawn. There's a kind of an Olympian look down at the people that fails to acknowledge that even now, in a time when we are riven by disagreements about a war and when we are anxious about our economy, this is still the world's dream machine."

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued this statement on Saturday regarding Tony Snow's passing:

Dear God, please let the Patriot Guard Riders know about this ahead of time. The Phelps gang is ready to strike, and this is their intent. Please pass this along to all who can get the word out so we can stop these fools. According to their site, this is when it's going to happen and why:

07/17/2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM Alexandria, VA Christ Episcopal Church (Lepor Colony) 118 N. Washington St. Tony Snow (Press Secretary for 6 "B" George W. Bush) is dead, YES! He had a platform, he was given some small talent by his creator. He was an unfaithful steward, and is now residing in hell. Each opportunity he had to faithfully REport what the servants at WBC had to tell this country/world, Tony Snow besmerched and vilified the words of God and the people of God.

Please read the rest at MsUnderestimated's site here.

Regardless of what you think about Fox News's Juan Williams, you owe it to yourself to read his remarkable tribute to Tony Snow.

I promise you will laugh, cry, and be thankful for having done so...and, you'll learn something about Tony you didn't know before.

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh spoke with Fox News on Saturday about the passing of his dear friend Tony Snow, as well as the AP's disgraceful coverage my colleague Tom Blumer reported:

The news of Tony Snow’s death wasn’t wholly unexpected, but it’s still devastating. Tony was a man brimming with optimism and you just felt that if anyone could beat this cancer, he could do it. He was an absolute professional in his craft and always, always a gentleman.

The conservative movement is diminished today and anyone who knew him is heartbroken for his wife, Jill, and his three children Kendall, Robbie, and Kristi.

“Rest in peace, gentle warrior.”

In 2006, I was invited to attend the annual Television and Radio Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC.  Before and after the big shindig, all the major news organizations throw parties in the same hotel.  I attended the Fox News event, and Tony Snow was there.  

I had never met Tony and he didn't know me from Adam. I was just a neophyte blogger from this new site, NewsBusters.  Nevertheless, Tony greeted and spoke with me warmly, and I had a very powerful sense of someone who, in a manner rooted in his religious faith, truly cared about others.  As I stood on the fringe of the crowd as many others spoke with him, I witnessed the same outpouring of caring and concern coming from Tony toward all that he met.  There was an palpable aura of loving-kindness that emanated from him.

It appears the good folks at the Huffington Post have a firm grasp on the hatefulness of their members, for the article published there on Saturday concerning the passing of Tony Snow is not accepting comments.

I guess Huffington's employees anticipated disgusting remarks about the former White House press secretary, and rather than deal with them on an individual basis chose to prevent them completely.

This seems a good decision considering the disgraceful behavior of HuffPosters in February 2007 when a homicide bomber struck outside a military compound in Afghanistan where Vice President Dick Cheney was staying.

Update at end of post: Netroots on the offensive concerning Snow's demise.

At long last, has the Associated Press lost all sense of decency?

The AP's story (saved here for future reference in case the wire service is embarrassed into revising it; you might consider saving it too as Exhibit A on how far over the cliff the dinosaur media has driven itself) by Douglass K. Daniel, with Jennifer Loven contributing (I might have known), gets in at least three cheap, fundamentally untrue, and totally uncalled-for shots at Tony Snow, who died earlier this morning.

I won't sully NB's front page with any of them. They follow the jump:

One of my fond memories of Tony Snow was his moving speech from this year's MRC Gala. In this video, Tony is accepting the 2nd annual William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence.

He was a great man and will be greatly missed.

We’ve lost another giant today. I was prepared to go straight to bed after having stayed up all night watching movies, but as I tuned to the TV, I saw that one of my favorite people, Tony Snow, had passed. I could not be sadder. He was only 53 years old, and colon cancer took his life. The world is missing a great friend today. Godspeed, Tony.

Has NBC White House Correspondent David Gregory turned over a new leaf?

Gregory, who has earned a lot of critics for having an anti-Bush/liberal bias, made it seem that way during a discussion about ethics in politics and journalism Thursday. He claimed to struggle with Jewish teachings about saying bad things about others - at least when it comes to Democrats.

Gregory, who is Jewish, said he relies on the Jewish law on speech to make editorial decisions for his MSNBC daily afternoon show "Race for the White House."

Tony Snow fans will love absolutely love this.

The former White House Press Secretary -- and all around good guy! -- is going to be Bill O'Reilly's permanent fill-in guest host on the "Radio Factor."

O'Reilly himself posted the good news at his website Thursday:

Insisting he's “not a conspiracy theorist,” Bill Maher, on the Friday night season debut of his HBO show, suggested that because Republicans prefer to run against Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama they engineered her victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary. Later on Real Time with Bill Maher, former ABC News reporter/anchor Catherine Crier claimed “you have to work really hard to find a truly liberal” politician and “Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama are not raging liberals.”

Maher opened the panel discussion, with Tony Snow, Crier and Mark Cuban, by observing how he found it “odd” that polls showed Obama ahead in New Hampshire, yet Clinton won, and “it does bother me that a private company runs the polling machines and that only they certainly seem to know what went on.” A couple of minutes later, Maher noted that “in crime they always ask...'who profits?'” Looking at Snow, he then pondered:

Who profits from the Hillary victory? They don't want to run against Obama. Your party does not want to run against him. They want to run against Hillary Clinton and now they have a race with her in it.

A bemused Snow called Maher's reasoning “totally wacko!” and “completely wacked” as Maher contended Republicans have thrown races before: “They did it to Ed Muskie.”

Video (28 secs): Windows Media (1 MB), plus MP3 audio (170 KB). Click and play Flash video in the MRC.org posting.

Reason magazine has fabulously given all lovers of Tony Snow an early Christmas present.

Published Sunday, this interview between the former White House Press Secretary and his former colleague on the editorial board of the Detroit News, Shikha Dalmia, is a pure delight.

Dalmia teased the question and answer segment with this marvelous introduction:

Although you likely didn't hear about it, former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow received a Freedom of Speech Award on October 16 from The Media Institute.

During his acceptance, Snow made some statements about liberal bias in the press, as well as the condition of the media industry, which fully explain why this event, as well as his address, went virtually unreported.

Thankfully, Glenn Reynolds found this spectacular speech for your review. Unfortunately, the text was posted as a PDF file that cannot be cut-and-pasted.

*****Update: Thanks to Free Republic, I can now include some of the highlights from this marvelous address (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer stratman):

During a heated interview over the Iraq war on Thursday’s "The Situation Room" with substitute host Suzanne Malveaux, White House press secretary Tony Snow went on the offensive against the mainstream media. In response to a question from Malveaux about how President Bush could "regain credibility" with the American people about the success of the troop surge in Iraq, Snow replied, "Well, you know what Suzanne, your credibility rating -- journalists’ credibility ratings are lower than the President’s."

The most heated exchange came in the last three minutes of the 5pm EDT hour interview. Malveaux brought up the results of a recent New York Times/CBS News poll that found that 71% of those polled disapproved of the way President Bush is handling the situation with Iraq.

Video clip (1:35): Real (2.8 MB) or Windows Media (3.1 MB), plus MP3 audio (550 KB).