Jay Carney
29th White House Press Secretary
Incumbent
Assumed office February 11, 2011
President	Barack Obama
Deputy	Jennifer Psaki
Preceded by	Robert Gibbs
Personal details
Born	James Carney (1965-05-22) May 22, 1965 (age 47) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Claire Shipman
Children	2
Alma mater	Yale University
Profession	Journalist
Website	White House Briefing Room

James "Jay" Carney (born May 22, 1965) is President Barack Obama's second White House Press Secretary.^[1] Prior to his appointment as Press Secretary, replacing Robert Gibbs, he was director of communications to Vice President Joe Biden.^[2] Carney previously served as Washington Bureau Chief for Time magazine, a post he held from September 2005 until December 2008, and as a regular contributor in the "roundtable" segment of ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Personal life and education[link]

Carney was raised in Northern Virginia, attended high school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey,^[3] and earned a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University, graduating cum laude, in 1987.^[4] He and his wife, Claire Shipman (a senior correspondent for ABC News)^[4], live in Washington, D.C., with their son and daughter.

Journalism career[link]

After being hired as a reporter for The Miami Herald in 1987, Carney joined Time magazine as its Miami Bureau Chief in 1989. Carney worked as a correspondent in Time's Moscow Bureau for three years, covering the collapse of the U.S.S.R.. He came to Washington in 1993 to report on the Bill Clinton White House.^[4]

He has written and reported about the presidency of George W. Bush, and was one of a handful of reporters who were aboard Air Force One with President Bush on September 11, 2001.^[4] Carney later won the 2003 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency.

Carney was Time's Washington Bureau Deputy Chief from 2003 to 2005, and Chief from September 2005 until December 2008. He was assigned to the magazine’s Washington Bureau in that tenure while also being able to write about politics and national affairs. Carney has also worked for CNN (another TIME Warner division) as a special correspondent.

Carney was one of the early mainstream journalists to take up the medium of blogging.

Work in Obama administration[link]

Jay Carney (middle right) in a White House staff meeting in the Oval Office, May 11, 2011

On December 15, 2008, Carney went from the private sector to public service as Director of Communications to Vice President Joe Biden.^[2][5]

In January 2011, Carney was selected to become the Obama administration's second White House Press Secretary.^[1] He was named the successor to previous White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs by White House Chief of Staff, William Daley.^[6][7] Carney was one of fourteen White House appointees announced by Daley on January 27.^[7]

He meets with the president daily, and can have four or five meetings a day to work on how to present ideas.

During a March 13, 2012, press briefing he revealed that his favorite band is Guided by Voices.^[8][9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jay Carney at WhoRunsGov at The Washington Post
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Jay Carney on Charlie Rose

v t e White House Press Secretaries Akerson Joslin Early Daniels Ross Early Short Tubby Hagerty Salinger Reedy Moyers Christian Ziegler terHorst Nessen Powell Brady Speakes Fitzwater Myers McCurry Lockhart Siewert Fleischer McClellan Snow Perino Gibbs Carney

v t e Joe Biden's Office of the Vice President Position Appointee Position Appointee Chief of Staff to the Vice President Bruce Reed Chief of Staff to the Second Lady Catherine Russell Counsel to the Vice President Cynthia Hogan Director of Administration for the Office of the Vice President Moises Vela Counselor to the Vice President Mike Donilon Domestic Policy Adviser to the Vice President Terrell McSweeny Assistant to the Vice President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison Evan Ryan Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to the Vice President Jared Bernstein Assistant to the Vice President and Director of Communications Jay Carney Press Secretary to the Vice President Elizabeth Alexander Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President Alan Hoffman Deputy Press Secretary to the Vice President Annie Tomasini Deputy National Security Adviser to the Vice President Brian McKeon Director of Legislative Affairs Sudafi Henry Residence Manager and Social Secretary for the Vice President and Second Lady Carlos Elizondo Director of Communications for the Second Lady Courtney O’Donnell National Security Adviser to the Vice President Tony Blinken

Tapper at the White House on July 22, 2009.

Jacob Paul "Jake" Tapper (born March 12, 1969) is an American print and television journalist, currently the senior White House correspondent for ABC News in Washington, D.C. He was named to that position the day after election day 2008, having covered then-senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

He last interviewed Obama in July 2009 in Moscow, in an interview where the president expressed confidence that his foreign policy approach was starting to work and said regarding the stimulus package, "there's nothing that we would have done differently."^[1] That January, Tapper had broken the story of the tax troubles of then-Health and Human Services secretary nominee and former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD),^[2] troubles that ultimately derailed Daschle's nomination.

From March through July 2010, Tapper was interim anchor of ABC's This Week, hosting the program until Christiane Amanpour became This Week's anchor.

Life and career[link]

Tapper was born in New York City and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Anne Tapper, retired as a psychiatric nurse at Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center. His father, Theodore S. "Ted" Tapper, a Dartmouth graduate, was a president of South Philadelphia Pediatrics, a group medical practice, and is an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Jefferson Medical College, both in Philadelphia.^[3]

He attended Akiba Hebrew Academy and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1991 with a B.A. in history modified by visual studies. He briefly attended graduate school at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.^[4]

In 1992, Tapper was a campaign press secretary for Democratic congressional candidate Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (PA-13) and later served as her congressional press secretary. ^[5]Tapper worked in public relations for Powell Tate, a Washington, D.C., public affairs firm run by Democrat Jody Powell and Republican Sheila Tate. He also worked briefly for Handgun Control Inc. (now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) in 1997. After writing many freelance stories, Tapper began his journalism career full time as a senior writer for the Washington City Paper from 1998 to 1999 and wrote about his experience going on a date with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 for that publication,^[6] in a story that skewered Washington's culture of scandal. He was the Washington correspondent for Salon.com from 1999 to 2002, where he was an early questioner of the Bush administration's claims, building upon prior claims made the Clinton administration, about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.^[7] He has also contributed to GQ, The Weekly Standard, NPR's All Things Considered, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2001 he hosted a TV show on CNN called Take Five in which young journalists and commentators discussed politics and pop culture. In 2002 he hosted a series of entertainment news specials on VH1 and in 2003 he hosted shows focused on independent film on the Sundance Channel. ABC News hired him in 2003. Tapper has been a frequent guest on the Imus in the Morning radio program.

He is the author of the books Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency on the 2000 Presidential election and Body Slam: The Jesse Ventura Story.

His comic strip Capitol Hell appeared in Roll Call from 1994 to 2003. He has also contributed cartoons to the American Spectator magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2006, he married Jennifer Marie Brown of St. Joseph, Missouri, who was a regional field manager in Washington, D.C. for Planned Parenthood Federation.

On July 6, 2009, former MSNBC television personality Dan Abrams launched a website service, Mediaite, reporting on media figures. The site ranks all TV-based journalists in America by influence. Tapper ranks, as of December 2010, at number one.^[8]

Tapper was considered one of the leading candidates to replace George Stephanopoulos as anchor of This Week. Stephanopoulos took over for Diane Sawyer, co-host of Good Morning America, when she assumed the role as anchor of World News.^[9] However, CNN's Christiane Amanpour was selected instead. Tapper served as the interim anchor until Amanpour took over the show on August 1, 2010.^[10]

Tapper has also appeared on the Judge John Hodgman podcast as guest bailiff, standing in for regular bailiff Jesse Thorn during the August 31, 2011 episode entitled "De Plane".

Personal Life[link]

Jake lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jennifer and two children. The Tappers were married in 2006 in Jennifer's home state of Missouri.

References[link]

External links[link]

• ABC News biography
• Jake Tapper's blog -- Political Punch
• Jake Tapper on Twitter
• Jake Tapper's personal website -- lots of links to past stories from before ABC News
• Jake Tapper's Salon.com archives