ABC Names Three to New Assignments

By SteveK 

As expected, ABC News announced Jake Tapper as the new Senior White House correspondent.

Also named in the announcement today was Martha Raddatz as Senior Foreign Affairs correspondent and Jonathan Karl as Senior Congressional correspondent.

Tapper moves to the White House from covering the candidates on the campaign trail. Raddatz moves to the foreign affairs position after serving as White House correspondent since November 2005.

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Karl has served as Senior National Security correspondent since January 2006.

Click continued to see the full release…


Jake Tapper has been named Senior White House Correspondent, Martha Raddatz has been named Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent, and Jonathan Karl has been named Senior Congressional Correspondent, ABC News President David Westin announced today. All three assignments take effect immediately.

“As we begin the transition to a new administration, we are fortunate to have in Jake, Martha and Jon three of the best beat reporters in journalism covering the White House, the foreign policy establishment, and Congress,” said Westin. “Each brings uncommon expertise and reporting skills that will ensure our audiences learn all that they want to know about where our government seeks to lead us.”

Jake Tapper moves from the campaign trail to the White House to cover President Elect Obama as ABC’s Senior White House Correspondent. Mr. Tapper was most recently ABC’s Senior National and Political correspondent for which he reported on the 2008 election and other political and cultural stories of the day. In addition to the election, Mr. Tapper, who joined ABC News in July 2003, has reported on a wide range of stories, including the war in Iraq, which he covered from Baghdad, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the investigation into the disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, and the debate over Terri Schiavo. During the 2004 Presidential election, Mr. Tapper reported on charges by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Senator John Kerry and also manned the Fact Check desk during ABC News’ debate and election coverage.

Mr. Tapper has served as a substitute anchor on “Nightline,” and “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” and contributed a report to a broadcast of “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” that won the 2005 Edward R. Murrow award for best network newscast. He contributes regularly to his popular blog “Political Punch” on ABCNews.com and weekly podcast.

Prior to joining ABC News, he was the national correspondent for Salon.com, writing on a range of topics from political profiles to the accounting scandal at Enron. Mr. Tapper was also a columnist for “TALK Magazine,” and has written for “The New Yorker,” “The New York Times Magazine,” “The Washington Post,” “The Los Angeles Times,” and “The Weekly Standard,” among many other publications. He was a frequent contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered” and his work was included in “The Best American Political Writing 2002.”

As a Washington correspondent for Salon.com from March 1999 to March 2002, Mr. Tapper broke a number of stories including candidate President Bush’s controversial trip to Bob Jones University during the 2000 presidential campaign. Mr. Tapper is the author of “Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency,” (Little, Brown) a look at the Florida recount, and “Body Slam: The Jesse Ventura Story” (St. Martin’s Press). His political comic strip, “Capitol Hell” appeared in “Roll Call” from 1994 until 2003.

ABC News’ Chief White House Correspondent since November, 2005, Martha Raddatz has been named the network’s Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent. During her tenure at the White House, Ms. Raddatz conducted several interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, including one in which the President admitted that while he was telling the nation that the strategy in Iraq was working, he knew that it was not. Ms. Raddatz is also responsible for breaking the news of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death from a US air strike in June, 2006.

Before covering the White House, Ms. Raddatz was ABC’s senior national security correspondent, through which she filed almost daily reports from the Pentagon on the ongoing war in Iraq and the insurgency. Since the war’s start in spring of 2003, she has made almost 20 trips to Iraq — more than any other Washington based television correspondent. She has also traveled frequently to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently returned from Iran.

While covering the Pentagon, Ms. Raddatz reported exclusively on a number of stories, including the near capture of al-Zarqawi in April 2005, plus the discovery of his laptop computer. She also broke the story that the attack on a US military dining hall in Mosul, Iraq in December 2004 was the work of a suicide bomber. Ms. Raddatz joined ABC News in 1999 as the network’s State Department correspondent. There she covered the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, as well as traveled to Africa, Pakistan, and India with the U.S. Secretary of State. Her coverage at the State Department after the attacks of September 11th was recognized, along with other ABC News recipients, with a Peabody Award as well as an Emmy Award. Ms. Raddatz has also been awarded two Emmys for coverage of Kosovo and the Elian Gonzales case in the news program “Weekend World News.”

Ms. Raddatz is also the author of “Long Road Home – A Story of War and Family.” The highly acclaimed book, detailing a remarkable battle in Sadr City, was released in March, 2007 making both the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists. The Washington Post described the book as “a masterpiece of literary non-fiction that rivals any war-related classic that has preceded it.”

In addition to her work for ABC News, Ms. Raddatz is a frequent guest on PBS’s Washington Week.” From 1993-1998 she was the Pentagon correspondent for NPR, where she reported on foreign policy, defense, and intelligence issues. During her tenure at NPR, she made numerous trips to Eastern Europe to cover the war in Bosnia.

Jonathan Karl, who has been ABC’s Senior National Security Correspondent since January, 2006, is moving to Capitol Hill to be the network’s Senior Congressional Correspondent. In his new role, Karl will report on political, policy and cultural stories of the day and for all ABC News platforms.

Since joining ABC in January, 2003 Mr. Karl has reported from more than two dozen countries on five continents. He reported more extensively on the situation in Darfur, Sudan than any other network correspondent, visiting Sudan three times in 2005. He has also broken several stories on Iran’s nuclear program and covered the 2004 Presidential elections in Russia. Mr. Karl has also traveled internationally with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

In 2004, Mr. Karl spent several months on the campaign trail covering the Bush-Cheney campaign. He co-anchored election night coverage on ABC News Now, anchoring for more than 14 straight hours.

As a congressional correspondent for CNN prior to joining ABC, Mr. Karl covered Capitol Hill, the White House, and the Pentagon, reporting on two presidential elections, President Clinton’s impeachment, the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, and congressional reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In 2001, Mr. Karl won The National Press Foundation’s Everett McKinley Dirksen Award, the highest honor for Congressional reporting. In 1998, Mr. Karl was the first reporter to obtain the Starr Report, one of the most sought after political documents in recent years.

A prolific writer, his work has been published in “The Wall Street Journal,” “The Weekly Standard,” “The New Republic,” “Reason,” “Christian Science Monitor,” and “The San Francisco Chronicle.” In December 1995, Mr. Karl’s non-fiction book, “The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of America’s New Militias,” was published by Harper-Collins.

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