The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi profiles ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl and what he calls “the Jon-and-Jay follies,” the almost daily give-and-take between the newsman and White House press secretary Jay Carney.
Carney occasionally tangles with other reporters — among them, notably, Fox News’ Ed Henry — but his exchanges with Karl have been especially testy, raising eyebrows among the White House media cadre and threatening to become a sideshow of the televised daily briefings.
[O]utside the office, Karl says he and Carney are good friends; their relationship dates to the Bill Clinton era. Carney’s wife, Claire Shipman, is Karl’s colleague at ABC News; she covered the White House before her husband joined it. Among other things, the two men share an interest in Russian history and politics.Advertisement
“I have enormous respect for Jay,” Karl said. “I think, in some ways, he’s one of the smartest people to hold that job. And I believe if he was sitting where I’m sitting, he’d be asking some of the same questions. I think he understands we have a job to do.”
Here’s our Media Beat interview with Karl, where he talks the fundamentals of the job: