Monday, April 06, 2009

The One True Journalist

Jake Tapper of ABC News twitters and I follow him. I follow news guys for tips for stories for blogging and breaking news, but Jake twitters like a crazy person sometimes and you gotta love that.

But what is even better to love is that he actually asks tough questions of Pres. Obama instead of just staring and drooling like the rest of the White House Press corps.

Don't get the wrong idea. Tapper is decidedly liberal. That is clear in his tweets too. But the difference is that Tapper is actually a rare thing these days. A real journalist with real integrity in his work. He doesn't let his liberal views keep him from being fair or asking the tough questions.

For crazy, here are just a few of his recent tweets while following around the Pres. in Europe:

re: snacks on plane - reporters descended like locusts upon trays of hummus and dolmades. skeleton found in wake-

the truth is i cant get "elmo has two hands" out of my head. during the campaign it was "bob the builder" theme song

Dude Looks Like a LAAYYY-DEEEEE!!!

hey, annoying person on bus, can u solicit the bus driver to get on the PA and be annoying too? u already did! thanks

DUDES POTUS just called on the China TV guy!!!!


National Review has a piece about him and it quotes Rush Limbaugh as saying, “Jake Tapper is the one guy outside the butt-boy bubble in the White House press room.”

Very true.

NR says this:

What we can say for certain is that Tapper isn’t afraid to go against the grain of the liberal consensus in pursuit of a story. Whether he was pointing out that Barack Obama was a “one-man gaffe machine,” factchecking Obama on the surge, or chiding him for blaming any and all mistakes on his staff, no mainstream journalist was tougher on Obama during the campaign. Considering the fact that much of the media gave Obama the kid-glove treatment, Tapper’s reporting was essential.

Conservatives never minded journalists being liberal. We just wanted their journalistic integrity to give us the news fair and balanced. But that has evaporated completely with few exceptions, and Jake Tapper is one of them.