I’m a huge fan of Tony’s personally and professionally. But I think this bit from the official Time-Warner press release in my email box warrants comment:
Former White House press secretary Tony Snow will join CNN as a conservative commentator beginning today, it was announced by Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S. A well-known and respected observer of politics with a longstanding news background, Snow will contribute to CNN as the network continues to broadcast winning political coverage.
Obviously, this is technically accurate. But something tells me that when ABC hired George Stephanopoulos they didn’t ID him as a liberal commentator. Jeff Greenfiel, Tim Russert, Hendrick Hertzberg, Chris Matthews et al. were probably not hired as “liberal commentators” either. I have no problem with “conservative commentators” getting hired by news networks. I used to be on contract with CNN, and I’d be delighted to get paid to be on TV again. But it’s very annoying how conservatives are expected to speak as “conservatives” but liberals offer their opinions under the rubric of objective analysis.