The Appointment of Tony Snow and Media Bias

When I was in high school, I was very lucky to have a certain teacher for U.S. History and Economics. Of all my teachers from kindergarten through college, his lessons stand out the most.

We learned about government, politics and the economy, and we had some heated classroom discussions - but the teacher never took sides. He let his students take sides to discuss the issues. To this day, I have no idea what his political opinions were.

I was a staunch conservative even then. In class discussions, I would advocate ideas like limited government and individual responsibility, while lambasting my liberal classmates with their "victim mentality" and support of "womb-to-tomb" government nurturing.

The most valuable lesson I learned in this class was how to recognize bias in the media. We learned that journalists were supposed to be objective, but sometimes their opinions would sneak into their articles. We also learned that unethical journalists could intentionally sneak bias into thier articles to influence their readers.

Most people don't read an entire newspaper article. Many will just read the headlines. Some will just read the first couple of paragraphs. Few will read the article in its entirety.

It became obvious that whoever created the headlines could mold public opinion and what was written in the first 2 paragraphs was much more important than the rest of the article.

Here's a case in point:

MSNBC.com has posted a Financial Times article about the appointment of Tony Snow as the new White House Press Secretary.

Here is the headline:

"Bush picks conservative pundit as press spokesman"

"Conservative pundit"? Why wasn't the headline, "Bush Picks Tony Snow as Press Spokesman"? or "Bush Picks Radio Talk Show Host as Press Spokesman"?

Here is the first paragraph:

"President George W. Bush on Wednesday appointed Tony Snow, a conservative pundit from the administration-friendly Fox News channel as his new press spokesman, in a move seen as an attempt to help address strained relations with the media."

Again, they emphasize "conservative pundit", but also add "from the administration-friendly Fox News channel".

Is that objective journalism? Why add "administration-friendly" to Fox News channel? Anyone who has listened to Fox News recently has gotten an earful of Bush criticisms.

Does the Financial Times want to mold public opinion, by implying Tony's appointment is some form of conservative nepotism, where Bush is assigning yet another crony to his Administration?

To be fair, in the third paragraph, the journalist points out that Tony is not a Bush sycophant:

"Although Mr Snow has been a favourite choice as interviewer for administration officials, including vice-president Dick Cheney, he has also been critical of the Bush administration's policies."

Of course, they have to temper the "critical of ... Bush ... policies" with "Mr Snow has been a favourite choice as interviewer for administration officials."

But most people won't make it to the third paragraph. Their opinion has already been formed by the sneaky little manipulations in the headline and the first paragraph.