Kurtz writes:
Snow was actually . . . interesting to listen to. He seemed to be engaging the press in a conversation, rather than spending his time in a defensive crouch. Yes, he split plenty of hairs in trying to discuss the domestic eavesdropping program without confirming or denying its existence, which seems a bit silly at this stage. He occasionally seemed to wander into rhetorical trouble.
But he didn't insult the press by saying, in effect, no matter what questions you ask, I'm going to repeat the same boilerplate phrases. Maybe that will change as the talk show aura wears off. As for pulling the plug on televised briefings, I still think it's hard to grasp why President Bush would hire a Fox News veteran as his press secretary and then allow the cameras to be kicked out.
In his coverage, Froomkin quotes Kurtz but then offers a rejoinder:
"But he didn't insult the press by saying, in effect, no matter what questions you ask, I'm going to repeat the same boilerplate phrases."
Nope, he found new ways to insult the press.
How so? Froomkin covers elements Kurtz downplays or ignores, noting Snow's equivocation and evasiveness on several issues, along with Snow's use of the term "tar baby." Froomkin highlights the sections of Snow's performance I found the most maddening:
"Q In his news conference with John Howard, was the President giving kind of a back-handed confirmation of the stories that the NSA is compiling telephone --
"MR. SNOW: No, he wasn't. If you go back and listen to the answer he gave you, he was talking about foreign-to-domestic calls. The allegations in the USA Today piece , which we'll neither confirm or deny, are of a different nature. So, no, he was not giving a back-handed confirmation."
If in fact you go back to look at that transcript , there was no mention of foreign-to-domestic calls. Bush did say "if al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know, and we want to know why," but then he clearly referred again to the original question, which was about the domestic database.
At his briefing, Snow proceeded to engage in precisely the same sort of back-handed discourse, actually referring to aspects of the USA Today story when it served his purposes -- but then refusing to answer any questions, when it didn't.
Here's part of his exchange with Hearst columnist Helen Thomas:
Snow: "[Y]ou're mentioning a USA Today story about which this administration has no comment. But I would direct you back to the USA Today story itself, and if you analyze what that story said, what did it say? It said there is no wiretapping of individual calls, there is no personal information that is being relayed. There is no name, there is no address, there is no consequence of the calls, there's no description of who the party on the other end is.
"Q Privacy was breached by turning over their phone numbers.
"MR. SNOW: Well, again, you are jumping to conclusions about a program, the existence of which we will neither confirm, nor deny."
When Snow turned away from Thomas to Martha Raddatz of ABC News, she followed up:
"Q You might repeat the same thing, but why not declassify this? I mean, the President did talk about the surveillance program a day after The New York Times broke that story. This would seem to affect far more people, and it did sound like the President was confirming that story today. He was answering Terry's question --
"MR. SNOW: Well, if you go back -- if you go back and you look through what he said, there was a reference to foreign-to-domestic calls. I am not going to stand up here and presume to declassify any kind of program. That is a decision the President has to make. I can't confirm or deny it. The President was not confirming or denying."
Then Snow continued: "Again, I would take you back to the USA Today story, simply to give you a little context. Look at the poll that appeared the following day. While there was -- part of it said 51 percent of the American people opposed, if you look at when people said, if there is a roster of phone numbers, do you feel comfortable that -- I'm paraphrasing and I apologize -- but something like 64 percent of the polling was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program -- the alleged program -- the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.
"Q But there are polls that show Americans are very concerned about it.
"MR. SNOW: The President -- you cannot run a security -- you cannot base national security on poll numbers. As the President of the United States you have to make your own judgments about what is in the nation's best interest.
"Q You just brought it up, though.
"MR. SNOW: Well, I did bring it up because what you were talking about is how people were concerned about privacy issues, and I tried to relate to you what happened. It was interesting, when people were given the specifics in that story, they did not seem to be terribly troubled."
Let's unpack that. First of all, not only was Snow citing poll results when it suited him, then getting righteously indignant when a reporter cited poll results that didn't, but he didn't have his facts straight.
I think Froomkin nails it here. The pretense is annoying. Qwest confirmed the program's existence, as did the President indirectly. And speaking in defense of it, Orrin Hatch has subsequently confirmed the program exists. Talking to the American people and the press as if they're idiot children isn't exactly encouraging. One more look at my favorite paragraph:
Snow: "[Y]ou're mentioning a USA Today story about which this administration has no comment. But I would direct you back to the USA Today story itself, and if you analyze what that story said, what did it say? It said there is no wiretapping of individual calls, there is no personal information that is being relayed. There is no name, there is no address, there is no consequence of the calls, there's no description of who the party on the other end is.
Give that man a doublespeak award! Here Snow essentially says, "There's no reason to be worried about a program that I won't confirm exists." More than that, here and in other responses, he argues that if this program that may exist existed, the American people wouldn't be bothered by its existence! How exactly can one boast about the restraints of a non-existent program? He refuses to comment on and thus indirectly challenges the essential point of the USA Today article, that this call-tracking program exists, then cites the article itself as support for his mollifications! This is all just silly.
My own take is that Tony Snow deserves a little slack as he gets used to the job, but if he goes on like this, I certainly won't respect him any more than Bush whipping boy and ineffective PR flack Scott McClellan. The "let's all pretend that I'm not lying" tact wears out veeery fast.
As to the "tar baby" reference, it clearly was not intended as a racist comment (ironically, Snow used the term "segregate" only a minute or so previously). I'm frankly a bit heartened to see a Bush administration use a non-sports metaphor. However, as evocative a metaphor as "tar baby" is, the term is loaded these days because of its use as a racial insult. Snow has pledged not to use it again, even if he's decried people for taking offense. I give him a pass on this one.
Tony Snow also managed some inadvertent comedy when he forget he no longer worked for Fox and referred to ABC as a "competing network."
As to Kurtz and Froomkin, I feel both do valuable work. Kurtz is officially The Post's media critic and also hosts a weekend show on CNN. Froomkin is officially a columnist and his work is labeled "opinion." While Kurtz gets bashed by the liberal blogosphere at times, sometimes deservedly so, overall I feel he does a good job. He can get testy at times when challenged, but he does admit mistakes. His fault as I see it is that he's essentially civil but also assumes that all other media combatants are as well. Very much part of the professional chattering class, Kurtz tends to fall into the false equivalency trap of “he said, she said” at times without always grilling folks that lie or distort things. He also quotes, far too often, shallow conservative blowhards like John Hinderaker and Jonah Goldberg. I prefer my conservatives intelligent; spare us the JV pundit team.
Froomkin, meanwhile, is fiercely pro-accountability. He grilled the Clinton administration as well, but the Bush administration has given him a wealth of material. What’s particularly refreshing about Froomkin is he’s willing to come out and say someone lied if they did. He brings some of the irreverence of a good editorial cartoonist to a researcher’s zeal for detail and is dedicated to journalistic transparency. Case in point: he made a mistake in the column I’ve linked above. He amended a correction to it by about 6:00pm that night and directly addressed it as an item in his column today. I like that. Kurtz is more measured but sometimes overly cautious, Froomkin is more opinionated and biting. Both provide a great round-up of the major stories of the day with a glimpse at what everyone’s saying about them. And both do champion the work of bloggers.
(Finally, having recently been the victim of an atrocious copy editor, I feel compelled to point out I'd never make it in that position. Copy editors inevitably adore bad puns for article titles and would inevitably have worked the already overused pun "snow job" into this blog post title. Or then there's "Kurtz Sunny on Snow, Froomkin Rains on Parade.")
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