ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper on Monday grilled the White House press secretary over Barack Obama's position on gay marriage and whether he will change his stance after the 2012 election. Tapper dismissed the President's 17 month "evolution" on the topic as "cynical." Yet, the ABC network skipped any coverage of his questions.
After suggesting that Obama's "likely future" would be support for gay marriage, Tapper quizzed, "...Why not just come out and say it and let voters decide? It seems — it seems cynical to hide this until after the election."
ABC ignored Tapper's interrogation on Monday's World News and Nightline and on Tuesday's Good Morning America. (It has appeared on ABCNews.com.) [See MP3 audio here.]
The journalist pressed Carney, asking if "you guys are just waiting for
the proper time...likely after November" to announce Obama's support of
gay marriage.
A testy Carney tried to change the subject, huffing, "I'm sorry you
don't want to hear about the president's support for LGBT rights,
because it's considerable."
Tapper shot back: "That's not accurate...It's not that I don't want to
hear it. I don't want to hear the same talking points 15 times in a
row."
Obama first insisted that his position was "evolving" way back on December 22, 2010. On Monday,
reporter John Berman offered an uncritical critique on the President's
muddled take on gay marriage: "What the President seems to want is
space, space to say that perhaps in a second term he might change the
policy."
He added that Obama would like to avoid the issue becoming "a major campaign issue in the next few months."
Reporters such as Tapper should be applauded for trying to force Obama
to explain his position on gay marriage. However, it would be nice if
ABC spared a few seconds to actually air his tough questions.
For a transcript of the exchange between Tapper and Carney, see ABC's Political Punch blog.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
