Note to the White House: If Jake Tapper is Too Busy to Go Abroad...

Jake Tapper, the White House Correspondent for ABC News, did not travel with President Obama to South America last week because his network felt there was too much going on at home, and that he might be needed to report on breaking news.
 
“You’d think the administration would have thought the same thing,” Imus noted. “If Jake Tapper’s not going to South America, maybe we shouldn’t send the President.”
 
Speaking of ABC News’s judgment, World News with Diane Sawyer opened last evening’s edition by devoting a solid ten minutes to the death of Elizabeth Taylor. Or, as she was described on this program, a “fat, drug-addled home-wrecker who probably killed Michael Jackson.”
 
“I don’t think that’s how we described her,” said Tapper, and acknowledged that ABC spent a sizeable amount of time on Taylor yesterday. “Elizabeth Taylor was very significant, culturally, to a large percentage of the people who watch evening news programs.” So, old people.
 
Tapper admitted it’s a risky decision for a newscast, but he has no problem with it. “I’m not a huge snob about that kind of thing personally, because I do think that culture and pop culture is an important part of our lives, and news shouldn’t be that stuffy.”
 
But news reporters should be skeptical, something they have been accused of lacking in covering the recent U.S. military action in Libya. Tapper defended his own reporting, noting that he did two pieces this week on why the U.S. is there, how long we plan on staying, and if there is an actual exit strategy, as President Obama has claimed.
 
“Maybe initially, in the first 24 hours, there was a rush to just provide the basic information about what was going on,” Tapper said, but insisted that, in his view, the media were “appropriately skeptical” the whole time.
 
In her column yesterday, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times indicated that Obama was pressured to use military force by the tough women in his administration, a notion Tapper disputed. “It was a little more complex than that,” he said.
 
As he understands it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was initially dubious about the U.S. intervening in Libya until she learned that Arab countries were also willing to commit forces, at which point she tried to sway Obama.
 
“That played a significant role, but that’s not Secretary Clinton as more influential than others,” Tapper said. The narrative that Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, and Special Assistant Samantha Power pushed Obama into war just doesn’t jive with his reporting on the issue, he added.
 
To Imus’s suggestions that people like Dowd and Rush Limbaugh are merely trying to paint Obama as a “pansy,” Tapper replied, “Those two are finding a common cause? That’s interesting.”
 
-Julie Kanfer