Is ABC’s Jake Tapper blocking journalists who criticize his Twitter updates? (UPDATED)
By on Mar 20th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Is ABC’s Jake Tapper blocking journalists who criticize his Twitter updates? (UPDATED)
ABC News’s Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper is a big fan of transparency. He has criticized the Obama administration for not allowing press during certain public appearances, and during a White House press briefing last month, Tapper went hard after Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the President’s commitment to transparency. Watch it:
But according to several journalists — including David Kurtz of TPM, Adam Serwer of the American Prospect, and at least four other people — Tapper is now blocking them from following his Twitter feed:
What did they do to deserve being blocked? Many of them apparently had the audacity to criticize some of Tapper’s tweets. (See update below)
Update ThinkProgress contacted Tapper (via Twitter), who replied, "that story isn't true. People can criticize, just wld like twitter to remain civil. Tpm is unblocked." Others are saying they are still blocked.
Update ThinkProgress received a statement from Jake Tapper, explaining that he is not trying to be less transparent, but rather trying to block users who are directing ad hominem attacks:
I'm trying to use twitter as a way to communicate with all sorts of people from all over the political spectrum, as a place for feedback, polite argument, and dialogue. I learned that the AP was taking Coach K's quote out of context from a tweet; it ended up on Good Morning America this morning. I want this way to talk to people. I don't want it to turn into what the comment section of my blog has become. The only people who have been blocked are people who make ad hominem attacks. They're still fully able to read my tweets -- I just don't care to read theirs.
Update Sargent has more, including a further response from Serwer.
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LOL! Jake, that is not transparency we can believe in!
Classic case of the hypersensitive press that can dish it but can’t take it.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:03 pmPetty! Petty! Petty!
March 20th, 2009 at 3:08 pmABC’s Jake Tapper blocks journalists who criticize his Twitter updates.
- – Tapper’s a twat.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:09 pmThe media’s turned into high-schoolers.
Really, who cares about what twats are on whose Twitters? How about we do journalism the right way?
I join Jon Stewart in shaking my fist at them. Twitter!!
March 20th, 2009 at 3:10 pmThe villagers do not want us pedestrian garbage even thinking about demanding truthfull and accurate reporting.
How dare we! It is not the business of journalism today to report, they are stenographers and sychophants.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pmI’m so tired of twitter. It’s like all the old people out there don’t want to miss the bandwagon on yet another social network-esque site and are making up for it by obsessing over this one.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pmWhat a twit.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pmCall me old fashioned but Twitter is the first innovation in electronic communications that leaves me completely cold. Not that you can’t fit useful thoughts into the short format but most of what I have seen ranges from banal to boring. The rush by television talking heads and Republican congressmen into the medium pretty much confirms its bottom feeder potential.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:22 pmI wanted to see what this whole twitter thing was about so I signed up for an account. I must be dense because I can’t figure out how the damn thing works.
For example, if I wanted to ask Trapper about blocking anyone, how do I go about doing that?
I think I’ll stay with IM. It’s faster and less confusing.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:22 pmIg–
Type a message with @jaketapper in it. He should see it.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pmFirst, TPM wasn’t rude and got blocked. And neither was I. This is what got me blocked:
ZOMG. PORK
Nothing rude in there, neither in the tweets nor the blogpost.
At least, IMO.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:30 pmSo to Jake Trapper, you are only civil if you agree with him. I’ve always thought that Trapper was a useless hack and this pretty much proves it.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:31 pmTapper comes from the ‘Jeff Gannon School of Journalism’.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pmMASS WHINING….some call a whaammmmmulance……
March 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pmIgnoranceIsNotBliss Says:
I wanted to see what this whole twitter thing was about so I signed up for an account. I must be dense because I can’t figure out how the damn thing works.
Me too; I signed up about a month ago, and for the life of me I still can’t figure it out, or what the big deal is.
¶ AIO
March 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pmIg–
Type a message with @jaketapper in it. He should see it.
Do you have to be a follower of his? And does he know that you are a follower?
March 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pmtweettweet
March 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pmThe way most people set up is that you see all @references to your account whether you follow or are followed or neither state holds. You won’t see his answer, though, unless you either follow him, or he includes an @reference to your username.
He may or may not know you’re a follower. THere’s a notification via email feature, but at about 5-10 per day I’m getting, I’m likely to turn it off soon. Tapper has over 5,000 followers, so I strongly suspect he has turned off notification.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:44 pmIsn’t Taper the one who said in a question “democrats rear their ugly heads?” Why don’t they just take his press credentials away? Nobody wants to listen to this idiot anyway – even in abreviated form.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pmJake Tapper seems to me to be a case-study in how the enormous money in television “journalism” creates problems for a middle-class democracy. When Tapper was working at Salon, he seemed like a concerned journalist. Now that he’s joined the elite, he seems like a different person probably because he is. Lately he and others are demonstrating how it’s so much easier and less risky to be argumentative with Democrats when they’re in power. Just compare Tapper’s typical behavior during the Bush administration to his current act. It’s funny in a tragicomic kind of way.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pmThis guy is just doing what he should have been doing with Bush. Probing, pushing, peeling. But… He asked Gibbs if he was worried at all that he’s lost control, and Gibbs responded “no”. Gibbs didn’t need to think hard on that one. The guy wasted his question and revieled himself as potentially hostile. Is he republican by any chance?
March 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pmJake, Jake, Jake…
Come on, now: “…that story isn’t true.”
Nice try. It would be correct to note that the TPM account was no longer blocked, but to say “…that story isn’t true” is factually incorrect, and an outright falsehood. The story was true, and remains so. Tapper chose to block the account, and to infer that now that access has been restored that the block effectively ‘never happened’ is a clear material misrepresentation.
Maybe it’s time to return to the fundamentals of journalism with a refresher course or two. To make such a claim in the face of the evidence and a public conversation about it, is stupid – by any reasonable measure. This calls into question the truthfulness of any assertion that Tapper has, or will in the future, make about anything.
Dumb move, Jake. You’re looking more like ‘media insider’ with every step you take!
March 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pmmany of these journalists who demand “transparency” are just using it as an excuse to demand other spoon feeding them. let’s be transparent both ways: who do these people represent? do they really represent “the people?” what are their special interests do they have? do they really want “the truth?”
it is funny how they demand others to change, and yet they are getting worse. the whole corporate media culture is good at one thing: scandal hunting! what a bunch of sharks.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:00 pmTapper is a major league assh… and always has been. He was considered an active, obnoxious, pain in the ass when he was at Dartmouth and nothing has changed in the intervening years. His own colleagues at ABC think so too.
This clown thinks he’s the “Republican Peter Jennings (LOL)!! Tapper, and his little gay closet case friends over at Politico are licking their chops for some type of perceived scandal that will become the agenda that “drives the news”. Tapper and Jim Vander Hei, Mike Allen (especially) are just jonesing for the administration to screw up in a major league way.
The reason that “everyone” (the media) are discussing the Special Olympics crack on Leno last night is because Assh… Tapper notified both Drudge and Politico………thus a wisecrack has driven the news with the chattering class. This mob hates the Clinton’s and because there are so many people in the Administration that worked for WJC, they assume Obama’s administration is the same.
I wouldn’t watch ABC if my house were on fire. I have contempt for these phoney, phoney arseholes and their faux indignation.
Tapper, FU and your friends!
March 20th, 2009 at 4:04 pmAlso, Obama immediately called one of the Shriver’s and( I’m sure he called Maria Shriver also) and apologized profusely for his remark. The contempt I feel for the clowns in DC that pass for the “press” knows no bounds.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:07 pmThe guy Tapper is an a..hole bigtime.Yeah he is the one out there always talking about transparency with the Obama admin.What a jerk.He has no credibility.But don’t forget the other A..holes in the news outfit,Charlie Gibson & Stephanapolous.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:08 pmI signed up for Twitter and quickly deleted the account. For starters, it was, initially, hard to understand how to use it.
Once I figured it out I still didn’t like it. Who wants to spend the day checking out what people are saying. Like, do I care what McCain has to say (besides it was his staffers) or Paris Hilton has to say.
I got to the point where I actually hoped a hacker would take down the whole damn thing.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:44 pmJack Tapper screams his audience. It is too uncomfortable outside his bubble now so he will stay inside.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:56 pmoops… I mean “screens” his audience…
March 20th, 2009 at 4:56 pmFor twits like Tapper, or John McCain or Rove or the backwards Obama B nut-cutter girl of yore, Twitter is just a way to react faster than the blogosphere, allowing them to drive the news cycle and their agendas with sarcastic or gossipy 140 character comments devoid of substance—all of which will be happily ‘catapulted’ by their MSM allies who have been losing ground to blogs in both market share and public trust.
But regardless of who uses it or why, Twitter is too rapid and too restrictive for rational discourse—its instant ‘information’ for the sake of instant information, nothing more.
That’s my opinion anyway.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:05 pmTwitter, where the gas bags congregate.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:28 pm…to exchange hot air.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:29 pmApe-Man Says:
…to exchange hot air.
I thought that was what Hot Air was for all along?
March 20th, 2009 at 5:37 pmWow he is in the league with rush, malking, hannity, they can spew their lies but nobody better call them on the lies.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:37 pmTapper is a twit. Who cares?
March 20th, 2009 at 5:53 pmTapper’s blog at ABC News is notorious for removing any comments that cast doubt upon Tapper’s facts or abilities. He removes opposing opinions on his blog, so it just makes sense that he censors his twitter, too. Tapper is basically a make-believe journalist. Never really investigates, and allows his personal beliefs to distort his reporting. I stopped reading Tapper’s blog some time ago because of his inaccurate and politicized rantings.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:57 pmToday, I posted a comment to Tapper’s Political Punch blog, making it clear that I had previously posted thoughtful, yet critical, comments to his blog, not resorting to any name calling… only to have my comments taken down for no apparent reason.
I linked to this article and asked if he could comment on it, and clarify his policy on what is and isn’t acceptable criticism… and within three minutes, my comment was deleted from his site.
So… I reposted, letting the audience know my first post appeared to have been “accidentally” deleted.
… and then he manually stripped out the link to this article.
Class act, Jake.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pmwow, you journalists are sissies.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:39 pmNo small irony there Jake. Blocking TPM, the gold standard on the internet, while you spiral into the netherworld of the OReilly’s and Doocy’s. Must be tough to look in the mirror, bub.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:52 pmPlenty of technology, to bad there is no content.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:05 pmtapper is in trap.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:27 pmthat jack tapper should just be a journalist and live twitter alone all these MSM are just destroying this country with there journalism when you look on the way the cable chatter reports its news you wish for people like tim russert, peter jennings those were the best days
March 20th, 2009 at 8:51 pmWTF? Why the strikethrough? The sentence is entirely accurate. His unblocking two people with bigger mics than the others he has blocked doesn’t change that. And his quote doesn’t change anything either. He blocks people so that he doesn’t have to see (never mind read) critical commentary. It’s got nothing to do with “bile” or “ad hominem” attacks.
Wonkette has it right. This is a case of “LALALALA I can’t hear YOU”
It’s not important. It’s illustrative and amusing that Tapper can’t take even civil criticism. It’s illustrative and amusing that he needs to lie about this. As he says, his blocking doesn’t prevent me from reading his commentary. It prevents him from having his world view sullied with my comments. I can’t think of a more clear example of the Beltway Bubble.
That this is considered “settled” because Tapper unblocked Serwer and Kurtz. That, of course, makes no sense, because the issue is that he blocked them, cut off his access to their commentary. His being embarrassed into restoring that access is not really relevant. And he didn’t unblock the many other voices that are civilly critical.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:18 amTapper is so full of shit. He blocked people on the ABC blog just because they called him a “hack.” giving examples of his hackery as well. I know.
That’s how much of a sensitive twit he is. (He’d block me for that too).
March 21st, 2009 at 4:57 pmBilbo Hussein Baggins Says:
So to Jake Trapper, you are only civil if you agree with him. I’ve always thought that Trapper was a useless hack and this pretty much proves it.
Like so many here.
March 21st, 2009 at 6:23 pmSo this is the new electronic journalism…I only want to hear from those who agree with me…well, if that is “freedom of the press”, then we can be pretty sure what he will be writing about…his political stance. Somehow this doesn’t sound “unbiased”.
To draw an extreme point – isn’t that how we went to war in IRAQ…they have WMD’s and WH listened to no one with a dissenting POV? and the mainstream media BOWED.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:17 am