alternative hippopotamus

Bloggers to Avoid: Jake Tapper

8 Responses to “Bloggers to Avoid: Jake Tapper”

1. KCinDC Says:
   February 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am

   That anti-Obama post is annoying, but the idiotic rankings are really National Journal’s fault, and Tapper’s followup post at least hints at how bogus they are. Despite being an Obama supporter who’s been increasingly annoyed at the Clintons, I found Tapper’s recent anti-Clinton post far more outrageous (he was eviscerated by Hilzoy). He simply lied about a speech by Bill Clinton on climate change, and the lying headline was on the front page of the ABC News politics section for most of the day and got picked up by Drudge and the RNC and the usual suspects, despite the fact that even Hot Air and some Cornerites said Tapper was misrepresenting Bill’s remarks.

   I suppose it’s possible that he wasn’t lying but is just an idiot. Lending credence to this theory is the fact that Tapper actually quoted the relevant context in his blog post, so anyone who read it could see that Bill had actually said the opposite of what Tapper was saying he said. Of course that hasn’t stopped this story from being injected into right-wing lore where it will live forever next to all the lies about Gore and Kerry.

2. AltHippo Says:
   February 1st, 2008 at 12:17 pm

   The update in Tapper’s post, that questions the National Journal’s criteria, was posted after I posted this. Originally it was just anti-Obama snark.

   The anti-Clinton piece was certainly worse, and maybe a better example of a certain kind of reporter. The kind of reporter that goes into a story with fairly cynical pre-conceptions about the motivations of politicians in general, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the parties. With the Clinton quote the pre-conception might be that people like Bill and Hillary don’t care if traditional manufacturers go out of business as long as it solves some dubious environmental problem.

   I actually don’t think people like Tapper intentionally lie, they just see everything through a distorted lens.

3. eRobin Says:
   February 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm

   And they see the Democratic candidates exclusively through that lens. I can’t even begin to imagine what the coverage will look like this year if their favorite candidate EVER, St. McCain, is the nominee this. I’m sure it will make us all long for the objectivity and accuracy of Tapper’s Clinton story.

4. KCinDC Says:
   February 4th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

   Yes, eRobin, that’s why I think if McCain is the Republican our only chance will be to have a candidate that the media don’t hate (yet, at least), and that candidate is Obama.

5. eRobin Says:
   February 7th, 2008 at 6:04 pm

   Figuring out electability is a sucker’s bet but I will admit that I find Obama to be marginally less unelectable against McCain than Clinton. McCain scares the bejeezus out of me. People really have no idea what he’s really about. They only know that he’s a maverick, who hates George Bush and would represent a return to good ol’ Republican governance. That’s what I hear over and over again from my low-info friends. Terrifying.

6. KCinDC Says:
   February 8th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

   One advantage of having the Republican nomination wrapped up earlier than ours is that Democrats can get a head start on educating the public about the real McCain, while Republicans are still having to split their smears between Obama and Clinton. It’s going to be tough to overcome the media’s love of McCain, especially since his “straight talk” theme apparently gives him a license to lie and never be called on it.

7. mara Says:
   March 28th, 2008 at 11:52 pm

   As a novice to the blogosphere, I thought Tapper was normal. He has a serious vendetta against Obama - going back over a year. In March, 2007, he posted a piece on Obama, that was based on something he saw on El Intifada, which in turn was based on hearsay from an alleged dinner party conversation. The point was that maybe Obama was not sufficiently pro-Israeli. The piece ended: “As the campaigns compete for Jewish support, it would be political malpractice for rivals campaigns to not send this blog entry around to big pro-Israel donors.” Political Punch 3/4/07 Jake Tapper Is this even legal? This week, he quotes from Rev Wright’s church bulletins and people react like, well, a lynch mob.

   Meanwhile, on McCain’s gaffes in the middle east, from the Sunni/Shia problem to the Purim/Halloween problem, he either doesn’t cover it, or comes up with an apologist who says that really, the Iranians love Al Qaeda. Is this guy a closet neocon?

8. AltHippo Says:
   April 1st, 2008 at 10:21 am

   I think this is a very good question, and I wanted to think about it in terms of reporters I know here in DC before answering. I want to use this as a basis for an upcoming blog post, looking at how reporters operate. Some like Tapper, are part of a clique that could be compared to the football player’s lunch table in high school. What I see in his case is more swagger than malice.

   There’s other reporters that have an agenda: be it neoconservatism, neoliberalism, the Catholic church, etc. At some point in their career cycle they show their true colors and become agenda advocates. Jon Solomon is a good recent example of this.

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