My Twitter Feud with Jake Tapper

It's going great, although given the imbalance in enthusiasm levels, I'm feuding with Tapper in about the same way I'm having a love affair with Cameron Diaz. Still, I appreciate that he's responding at all.

This is based on Tapper's righteous indignation that the Obama administration criticized Fox News. As we know, in the United States politicians are encouraged to refer to reporters as liberal terrorist traitors. That's just telling it like it is, and when they do it, corporate journalists like Tapper rush to be the first person to go on TV to say the politicians have a point.

On the other hand, if politicians criticize a giant corporate news outlet from the left, that obviously is AGAINST THE LAW. Jake Tapper saw this lawbreaking, and at a White House press conference made a citizen's arrest:

TAPPER: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

GIBBS: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

TAPPER: ...I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” -- why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Below is my entire Twitter exchange with Tapper, from beginning to (current) end. I'll continue to update it here, or you can also follow it directly.

tinyrevolution @jaketapper - besides politicians criticizing media, what startles you most about world you've woken up to after 40 year coma?

jaketapper @tinyrevolution and reporters should have asked the WH about it for every one of those instances

tinyrevolution @jaketapper, you've described Fox as a "sister organization" to ABC. Is al-Manar also your sister organization?

tinyrevolution Trying again: @jaketapper, you've described Fox as a "sister organization" to ABC. Is al-Manar also a sister organization?

jaketapper @tinyrevolution by that i meant a fellow WH-credentialed news org.

tinyrevolution @jaketapper So, no ABC concern at US bombing SerbiaTV, Bush's wish to bomb Al-Jazeera and Israel bombing Al-Manar because no WH credentials?

tinyrevolution @jaketapper And no ABC concern at Perle calling Hersh "closest thing US journalism has to a terrorist" because...NYer isn't credentialed?

jaketapper @tinyrevolution Youre putting words in my mouth and then assailing them. Seems to me you dont need me if youre going to do both parts.

tinyrevolution @jaketapper I've searched for evidence of ABC concern about all those examples. I've found none. Happy to acknowledge if it exists. Does it?

tinyrevolution @jaketapper To be fair, George Will did ask William Cohen whether wussy civilian leaders were preventing NATO from bombing SerbTV

tinyrevolution @jaketapper And later Morton Dean did say, "From NATO's point of view, the timing of the attack [on SerbTV] was exquisite."

tinyrevolution @jaketapper But whatever your answer, I should say I do appreciate and admire your responsiveness

jaketapper @tinyrevolution you're conflating two very very different things. bombing a media outlet in war v. criticizing one domestically.

tinyrevolution @jaketapper Okay: difference in your reaction *not* WH credentials, but other outlets were foreign & it was war?

tinyrevolution @jaketapper So, if Iranian mullahs criticize Iranian paper = something Iranian journalists should care about...

tinyrevolution @jaketapper ...and if Iranian mullahs attack America and blow up Fox headquarters = not something Iranian journalists should care about?

tinyrevolution @jaketapper Finally: seems worth noting America's never been at war with Qatar, al Jazeera's home. But they are foreign!

tinyrevolution @jaketapper Then of course there's Seymour Hersh, who I believe is Swedish and hence fair game

tinyrevolution Hope no one tells @jaketapper that WH staffer wanted president to "attack [the press] and attack hard"...in 1971 http://tr.im/Kh0Y

tinyrevolution @jaketapper WH staffer attacked press as liberal; press struck back by putting him on national TV 17 hours per day http://tr.im/Kh0Y

—Jonathan Schwarz