NYT: Jay Carney, ‘Non-Partisan’ Reporter Turned Obama WH Press Secretary? Not Really
Thursday’s New York Times featured a puffball profile by Jeremy Peters of Jay Carney, the recently installed White House press secretary and former reporter for Time magazine undergoing a trial by fire in the wake of international crises. Carney left Time after the election to become communications director for Vice President Biden before getting his White House promotion. The story headline, “ News Events Test a Veteran Reporter in Role as White House Spokesman ,” promised scrutiny that doesn’t make it into Peters’s story, which leads with its chin: Jay Carney has never been much of a partisan. His former colleagues at Time never knew which politicians he voted for. He complained privately that he felt the magazine’s coverage of the 2008 election — the one that put his current boss in the White House — was too lopsided toward Barack Obama. If you work for the White House, just how “non-partisan” can you be? My colleague Tim Graham dug into the Media Research Center archives last month and came up with a “ dossier of clues ” refuting the idea of Carney as a nonpartisan journalist. Here's a sample: “In towns like Pushkino (pop. 90,000), many Russians view the tumult sweeping Moscow with more anxiety and skepticism than do their big-city compatriots…they wonder if the destruction of Soviet communism will bring them anything more than uncertainty and hardship.” — Time reporter James Carney, September 9, 1991. “The fear that continues to fester about Bush — as we read about his periodic foreign-policy gaffes and then hear him blithely assert that what he doesn't know he can learn from his advisers–is that at 53 he has the same cavalier attitude toward knowledge that he had at 21: he could learn what he needs to know, but he doesn't seem to think it's worth his time….There was something else jarring about what Bush said [about Israel]. There is no such thing as an 'inter'-ballistic missile. These mistakes may seem minor, but taken together they suggest that Bush is still under water when grappling with foreign- and defense-policy basics.” — Time reporter James Carney playing up Bush gaffes, November 15, 1999. “As he unveiled his new-look campaign in South Carolina last week, including Oprah-style sessions with citizens and banners heralding him as A REFORMER WITH RESULTS,
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on March 17, 2011. Filed under