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Although it’s not so much breaking news, since it’s been much bandied about lately, (inside the beltway, at least) Fox News commentator Tony Snow has been officially appointed as the new White House press secretary . We thought we’d gauge reaction in the briefing room to the move by talking to veteran White House correspondent Bill Plante.

“The White House clearly hopes that by appointing an insider like Snow -- someone who has experience with television -- that they’ll warm up a very distant relationship with the press,” said Plante. “From the beginning, this White House disdained the press,” but with approval ratings dwindling at record lows lately, “this new chief of staff is trying to reach out and Snow’s appointment is a reflection of that.”

But that doesn’t necessarily have to do with Snow’s background as a journalist, said Plante. “I’ve never thought of him as a just-the-facts journalist,” he said. “He’s an opinion writer and a pundit.”

The likelihood of Snow's appointment improving relations with the press has more to do with the fact that Snow “understands how things work,” in the press, said Plante.“He has television experience and a friendly personality.”

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Slate's John Dickerson has three suggestions for the White House in its search for a new press secretary to replace Scott McClellan. He's gone 1 for 3. Let's start with the base hit: Dickerson quite rightly says the White House should install someone who doesn't lie to the press. It wasn't always McClellan's fault when he lied – Karl Rove and Scooter Libby left McClellan out to dry by telling him they were not involved in the Valerie Plame leak, which he subsequently told the press – but when the press secretary is shown to be lying, it doesn't do much for his credibility. And a press secretary without credibility has an awfully hard time controlling a story.

But it's worth looking closely at Dickerson's other suggestions. He claims that "[t]he new press secretary needs not only to be in the room when the decisions are being made, but he needs to be empowered to talk about what he's seen." In theory that's great – transparency is our guiding principal, after all – and there's certainly something to giving the press secretary enough access so that he or she knows, for example, when Scooter's not telling him the truth. But it would be political suicide for any White House to empower a press secretary to offer too much candor about "what he's seen."

Let's turn it around – does the press corps offer up its own secrets so readily? Does it tell the government the identities of the anonymous sources it sometimes relies on or reporters' personal feelings about the people they cover? Of course not, because journalists have reason to keep some secrets. The same goes for the government. The government may sometimes overreach in defining what it can justifiably keep secret – a tendency that the journalists are empowered to try to correct – but it would be foolish to simply throw the doors open and expose every mistake or instance of internal strife. If Dickerson simply wants more candor, I'm with him. But an all access pass? The press corps might want to take a good long look in the mirror before making such a request.

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