Larry Wall Quotes

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman and resident fantasist …

Every press secretary faces an enormous amount of information. Events move really fast. You're responsible for a tremendous amount of information, and again, a tremendous amount on competing agendas. Not everybody grease in the White House.

I have no more obligation to spin. When you’re in the White House, you spin.

When I go stand up at the podium in front of the White House press corps, I never lie. I never say something that I know is untrue. Credibility is enormously important to a press secretary.

Just to be seen strolling to or from a helicopter on the White House lawn, shouting an evasive answer to Sam Donaldson, must seem to the Reagans not quite satisfactory enough of a 7 PM presence, and this inane scene certainly galls the press.

As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room.

To be sure, administrations since Ronald Reagan had gone out of their way to massage and 'spin' news to the president's advantage, while the media did its best to un-spin it.

By virtue of some of the ways the game is played, in terms of message discipline, in terms of access for reporters, and especially in the way that sources and subjects, especially famous subjects, treat the media, almost by default there's more news that's falling into books.

The genius of David Petraeus has always been his masterful manipulation of the media.

The day I became press secretary to the President of the United States, I was in an entirely different world from the one I'd been in the day before.

We studied Western journalists' reporting methods, fed them story ideas, steered them toward sympathetic interviewees, and supplied them with the revolutionary movement's facts and figures.

Every organization has men and women who will be sure that the news gets out when it is good news. The problem is with the bad news. That is the challenge of democracy

Everyone in politics turns to the press, if only to manipulate it or deflect it.

Our job [White House press secretaries] is to serve the interest of the President while recognizing the interests of the press.

Misunderstanding is the great enemy of every White House press secretary.

I was asked to write a press briefing emphasizing the positive steps the administration had taken in the area and minimizing the negative ones. I was an Assistant to the President. I have done that for several Presidents. When you’re on the staff of the President of the United States you try and make things look as good as possible.

How can you govern if you always have to feed the news cycle?

It’s like a presidential press conference. Information goes in and information goes out, but there is not necessarily a connection between the two.

Nothing is so tantalizing to journalists as some answer they can't get. If you want to appeal to political journalists,…you hide something from us …

I was instructed let’s put out press releases touting advances and let’s minimize problems because we want the Department of Home Security to be a good news story…. But you have to tell the truth when you are in a job like this.

Every administration I remember has tried to control its message and manage contacts with the media. As a senior editor for more than a quarter century, I frequently received complaints from administrations of both parties about coverage they considered unfavorable, along with occasional and mostly empty threats to cut off access.

I will say this: One thing I did see in my reporting again and again is that the Obamas themselves are much more involved in handling stories than is usually known.

I don't think they need to be nice to reporters, but the White House seems to imagine that releasing information is like a tap that can be turned on and off at their whim.

To be sure, every White House tries to limit its exposure to difficult and distracting questions. The Obama administration was scrutinized for its use of late night shows and YouTube chats to get the president's message across in low-risk situations.

There's no job that will humble you like the White House press secretary job.