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The Dartmouth
March 28, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Q&A with CNN correspondent Jake Tapper ’91

Jake Tapper ’91 filmed a segment focused on the election for his show, “The Lead,” on the Green on Friday afternoon.
Jake Tapper ’91 filmed a segment focused on the election for his show, “The Lead,” on the Green on Friday afternoon.

Jake Tapper ’91, a CNN correspondent, broadcast his show “The Lead” from the Green last Friday afternoon, focusing on student voices in the election and in particular, Tuesday’s upcoming New Hampshire primary. The program, which airs every day at 4 p.m. on CNN, covers top news stories ranging from politics, money, sports and popular culture. The Dartmouth sat down with Tapper before his broadcast to talk about his reporting the role of the media.

Who will you be interviewing on campus Friday?

JT: I’m not going to be interviewing anybody major on campus Friday; most of the interviews will be remote. I am going to be interviewing a couple of women Democratic senators who are in New Hampshire today getting out the vote for Hilary Clinton, but they are in Manchester at the time that I will be doing the interview. I will have a couple panelists: former [Michigan] Governor Jennifer Granholm will be with me and Republican consultant Phil Musser will both be on set, but everyone else will be spread out around New Hampshire. I know Hanover feels like the center of the universe, but it’s not the center of New Hampshire. There are a lot more candidates in Manchester than there are in Hanover, and I will be doing my show on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday from Manchester. The only reason I’m here is because I went here and I love it here. Hanover is not conducive to great bookings.

When you hosted the second Republican debate, you tried to make the candidates engage with each other. How do you think your experience as a moderator has influenced your reporting?

JT: I think it underlined the fact that the stakes are so high. That was the highest rated show in the history of CNN. So the fact that I moderated it and 24 million people watched it reiterates the fact that people are really engaged this year and the pressure is on for not just the candidates, but the media as well.

Do you think there comes a point where everyone is so focused on politics and the race that other news is left by the wayside? Such as recently looking at the Flint water crisis?

JT: That happens with all sorts of news events, whether it’s a presidential election or any other big story, other things going on that are important sometimes fall by the wayside, unfortunately. I think the water crisis in Flint is an example of that, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t cover it. We were just late to covering it and we have an obligation to continue covering it. We have and we will. It happens and it’s like everything else I do. It’s something to learn from and be better for in the future.

How does your news team bring forward the pieces you present? How is news picked to report on?

JT: My senior team has a phone call and meets everyday at 7:15 a.m. I talk to my executive producer at about 8:30 and then there are meetings throughout the morning. We have a big staff meeting at 12:30. We have a team of 20 or so people and everyone is encouraged to bring ideas, bring thoughts and make sure we’re covering what we need to cover in the way we need to cover it. I’m constantly on social media looking for stories that we should be covering. And hopefully, doing it that way is the best way to bring news to the viewer at four o’clock.

Does getting your news from social media hinder it in a way? A hundred and forty characters can only communicate so much.

JT: We don’t get our news from social media. Social media is a way to get at the journalism. Social media is not the journalism, rather a means to communicate with it. So, it’s a link to a story in an Oklahoma newspaper or a Yemini blogger but it is not the whole story. We do our own work, too, but utilize it to find a way to hear things you normally wouldn’t hear.

How do you think that the media has evolved since you began your show in March 2013?

JT: Twitter has been the big development. Figuring out how to use Twitter, how to make sense of all the noise and all the feedback, has been part of media’s evolution. One of the things I think is important is to listen to viewers and tweeters, but then ultimately you cannot be at the whim of social media. You listen to what they have to say, but sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes social media can create an opportunity for a mob mentality. That is something important to keep in mind as well.

Considering the idea of commercial media and how it is fueling the news cycle, do you think that the audience has a role to play as well? Does the viewer have a sort of responsibility?

JT: Viewers do not have a responsibility, but [the media has] the responsibility. But the viewer has a role. The viewer that is engaged and intelligent, who rewards the media and journalism that they like, can be a powerful force. You see that when stories become viral, especially when the important stories become viral. So, there is a role, but it is not an obligation. If a viewer or a news consumer wants to play a role, they can, and would play a very important role.

The media can play a variety of roles, acting as a watchdog entity in some cases and as a government correspondent in others. You share information with the people — how do you think your shows play that role?

JT: I think I am known for being a fairly tough questioner. And I think that that is part of it. By the same token, there is a balance to it. Your show cannot be a non-stop fact check. You have to let politicians say what they want to say and get their message out. It’s a balance, but we in the media have an obligation to not be agnostic when it comes to facts. Facts are what they are and we are supposed to be advocates for them and the truth.

Do you think that only fact checking one person instead of another leads to bias?

JT: I think that one needs to fact check fairly. And how one fact checks is important to the cause. If you only fact check one party or if you only award “Pinocchio’s” or “pants-on-fires” to one party, when and if the other party is telling untruths as well, you are undermining the credibility of fact checking. The news is supposed to be allegiant to facts and the truth. Not to ideology.

Can you think of instances where that has occurred in the media?

JT: Yes, but I’m not going to share them with you. I try to be collegial and I have a lot of strong opinions on things, including journalism — especially journalism. I think collegiality is important and I know that a lot of people in journalism are trying to do the best they can. I don’t think I need to lend my voice to the masses shouting. Also, I am not a particularly good media critic considering I am in the media. I have complete conflict of interest. That is why I am not going to share. But that does not mean it doesn’t exist.

How did you choose your topic when writing your book, “The Outpost” (2012)?

JT: I had been covering the war in Afghanistan from the North Lawn of the White House as a White House correspondent for CNN, but I was not covering what was going on on a day-to-day basis. I reported on the numbers of soldiers that were on the ground, 10,000 or 20,000, but never their names. My son had been born on Oct. 2, 2009 and the next day, Oct. 3, this outpost that I had never heard of in a part of the world that I had never covered was overrun by almost 400 insurgents and eight Americans were killed. I was just sitting in the room, holding my son, and watching news reports on how eight other sons had been killed. It was a poignant moment. Everybody covered that the outpost was in this horrible place at the bottom of three steep mountains, right near the Pakistan border, but no one covered why it was there. I wanted to know why it was there and no one would answer the question. So, I set out to find out myself.

Why was the outpost put in that position?

JT: They were trying to win over the population. They only had so many soldiers so they spread out all over the place with small groups. In that part of Afghanistan, at the base of the Hindu Kush, you are either on a mountain or in a valley. That’s the choice. They didn’t have enough helicopters in Afghanistan to supply the camp, only by car or truck. Therefore, the camp had to be by the road and that is why it was put at the bottom. But, I wrote a whole 500-page book about it. It’s a little bit more complex than that.

Do you see a sort of inactivity or numbness to the news in the younger generation?

JT: People have their lives. People live their lives, trying to make a dollar and provide for their family and get ahead. Things are much more complicated in terms of trying to make a living than probably most, or many, Dartmouth students are even aware. I don’t think this generation is any different. When I was in Hanover, I wasn’t paying attention to everything going on in the world. I don’t begrudge students for focusing on their lives and not necessarily on anything outside the Dartmouth bubble. My job is to bring people the news in a compelling way so that they enjoy hearing about it and like hearing about it. This is my career.

How has your Dartmouth experience influenced you today? What made you want to be a reporter?

JT: It took me a long time to figure out that I wanted to be a reporter. I was a cartoonist at Dartmouth, but I will say that there was always very lively debate about campus issues and lots of smart professors. I was a history major so I learned to love history here. I think that all of that helped to prepare me for where I ended up going, but it took me a while to get there.


Alexa Green

Alexa Green is a junior from Boca Raton, FL. She is majoring in English, with minors in Arabic and Public Policy. After joining the newspaper her freshman winter, she served as a beat reporter  covering Hanover & the Upper Valley. Following this position, Alexa  became the associate managing news editor. Outside of the newsroom, she  is a tour guide on campus, works for the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, and conducts research in the English  department. During her off term, Alexa worked for I.B.Tauris, an  independent publishing house in London, U.K., editing and publicizing international relations and politics books. She is passionate about the ways in which policy, current events, history and journalism have interconnected roles in defining global issues.