Tale of the Jay Carney Tape

This is all very wonky with geek-infested Twitter, retweeting and blog times, but credit is credit. ABC's Jake Tapper is irked this afternoon that not everyone is crediting him on his scoop that Jay Carney will be named the new White House press secretary scoop. The news was ultimately released in a statement, but not for Tapper -- he had it pre-release. Tapper Timeline 2:34 p.m. on Political Punch blog: "President Obama Taps Jay Carney for Press Secretary, DeParle and Mastromonaco as Deputy Chiefs of Staff" -- Read here. NYT's media writer Brian Stelter quickly retweets Tapper's news. Tapper later celebrates with a "BOO yah" tweet. Then later: "@Brianstelter are folks really not crediting abc? Am on a train - " CNN Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry wrote about it at 3:16 p.m. on Twitter: "President expected to name ex-journalist Jay Carney new WH Press Sec -- late this afternoon or more likely Fri -- per senior Dem source." Politico's Mike Allen also wrote about it on Twitter 45 minutes ago: "Jay Carney to be announced THIS AFTERNOON as Gibbs successor, along with merger of press and communications offices, with Dan Pfeiffer head." Add CBS News, WaPo's The Fix and appropriately named Politicwhore to the list. No credit for Tapper. > Update: A slight monkey wrench in this story. John Mercurio (formerly with Roll Call, The Hotline, etc.. and now with Burson Marsteller) writes in to say he actually scooped this on Tuesday. At 2:26 p.m. On his Facebook page. He wrote, "Jay Carney to the WH press shop? Hmmmm." As we told him, that was more a gossipy murmur than a definitive fact. He says he knew for certain at the time. In an additional comment on Facebook (not considered an official news source amongst D.C. journos) he wanted the record to reflect that he also wrote, "Just heard it from a good source, they're going to announce later this week." > Update #2: Turns out this story isn't so simple. A close observer of the White House briefing room points out that AP's Ben Feller came in with the story with definitive language at 3:52 p.m. To many, Tapper, who reported on six staff changes, still got it first and then others jumped on the bandwagon. To HuffPost, it was Henry. The whole thing is a mixed, close call with varying opinions. The game to get White House news and get it first is, as always, a seriously fierce competition.

Fishbowl

Tale of the Jay Carney Tape

Betsy Rothstein

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Betsy Rothstein