Guffaws About a Fox Guarding the White House
NEW YORK — The selection of Fox News host Tony Snow on Wednesday as the next White House press secretary reignited a debate about the network's political leanings.
The liberal blogosphere chortled about the choice. "Snow, like everybody else on the payroll at Fox, is already a White House spokesman," the blog Reclusive Leftist read, one of many liberal sites that mocked the move. "Is there really a need to give him an office in the West Wing and pay him a government salary?"
The Democratic National Committee took a swipe at the cable network as well, with spokeswoman Karen Finney calling Snow's hiring "an interdepartmental move from one part of the conservative infrastructure to another."
Fox News anchors responded to the chatter about the White House tapping one of the network's own.
"The joke has been all along, we've been hearing it all day on the radio and stuff, 'Tony's not really changing jobs; he's just changing buildings,' " Shepard Smith said on-air Wednesday afternoon. "The conspiracy theories abound. They're baseless, of course. I promise."
In the decade since Fox News Channel launched and then overtook CNN as the top-rated rated cable news network, it has contended with criticism that it leans to the right, despite its "fair and balanced" slogan.
Fox News vigorously rejects that notion, saying that its format mirrors that of many newspapers, which provide news stories as well as editorials. Though many of its best-known personalities such as Sean Hannity and Brit Hume -- to whom Snow gave his only television interview Wednesday -- offer outspoken conservative views, straight news programming dominates much of the network's daytime schedule.
Fox has taken pains to shield its news coverage from charges of bias. In 2000, network officials reprimanded Snow, then a political analyst and host of "Fox News Sunday," for speaking to a GOP youth group during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
But Snow's White House appointment reinforces for some the perception that Fox News is the go-to network for the administration, media observers said.
"Much of the public will say, 'Suspicions confirmed,' " said Robert Zelnick, chairman of Boston University's journalism department, adding that such sentiments understandably ruffle the network. "The essence of journalism is independence and not hewing to any particular line."
