Jake Tapper

Jacob Paul Tapper (born March 12, 1969) is an American journalist, author, and cartoonist.

He is the lead Washington anchor for CNN, hosts the weekday television news show The Lead with Jake Tapper, and co-hosts the Sunday morning public affairs program State of the Union.

He later enrolled at Akiba Hebrew Academy, an independent Jewish day school formerly located in Merion, Pennsylvania, and attended Dartmouth College, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with a B.A. in history, modified by Visual Studies, in 1991.

At Dartmouth, Tapper was a member of Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity.

He briefly attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

In 1992, Tapper served as a Campaign Press Secretary for Democratic congressional candidate Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (PA-13) and later served as her congressional press secretary.

Tapper also worked for Powell Tate, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm run by Democrat Jody Powell and Republican Sheila Tate.

Tapper also worked for Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) in 1997.

Tapper wrote several articles as a freelance writer and then began his full-time journalism career in 1998; for two years, he was a Senior Writer for the Washington City Paper.

While there, Tapper wrote an article about going on a date with Monica Lewinsky, which skewered Washington's culture of scandal.

Tapper won a Society of Professional Journalists award for his work at the Washington City Paper.

Tapper was the Washington Correspondent for Salon from 1999 to 2002.

In 2001, Tapper was the host of the CNN news talk show, Take Five.

Tapper was also a columnist for TALK Magazine, and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.

Tapper's reports about Enron were nominated for a 2002 Columbia University School of Journalism online award, and he was an early questioner of the Bush administration's claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.

Tapper was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered and his work was included in The Best American Political Writing 2002.

Tapper was the correspondent for a series of VH1 news specials in 2002.

ABC News hired Tapper in 2003.

While working there, Tapper covered a range of topics including work in the ABC News Baghdad bureau, from New Orleans after the failure of the levees after Hurricane Katrina, and from Afghanistan.

Tapper was named Senior White House Correspondent on November 5, 2008, the day after the 2008 presidential election.

From March to July 2010, Tapper was interim anchor of ABC's This Week, hosting the program until Christiane Amanpour became This Week's anchor.

In 2010, 2011, and 2012, the White House Correspondents' Association awarded him the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for presidential coverage under deadline pressure.

He was a key part of the ABC News coverage of the inauguration of President Obama that was awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story.

His book The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor debuted at number 10 in November 2012 on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardback non-fiction.

Tapper's book and his reporting on the veterans and troops were cited when the Congressional Medal of Honor Society awarded him the "Tex" McCrary Award for Excellence in Journalism.

The Republican primary debate Tapper moderated in September 2015 drew more than 23 million viewers, making it the most-watched program in the history of CNN and the second-most watched primary debate ever.

He also moderated the Republican presidential debate in Miami on March 10, 2016, which drew almost 12 million viewers, and according to Variety, "garnered acclaim for its substance".

Tapper was born in New York City and was raised in Queen Village, Philadelphia, the son of Theodore S. "Ted" and Helen Anne (née Palmatier) Tapper.

His mother, who is originally from Canada, retired as a psychiatric nurse at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

His father, from Chicago, graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and went on to serve as the president of South Philadelphia Pediatrics and associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Jefferson Medical College.

His parents are Jewish; his mother, who was raised Presbyterian, converted to Judaism.

He was named for Jacob Scher.

When Tapper was young, he spent summers attending the Jewish summer camp Camp Ramah in the Poconos.

Tapper attended the Philadelphia School, a progressive, independent elementary school known for its weekly out of classroom excursions to farms, etc. In eighth grade he did a comic strip for a local free weekly paper.

"In his commitment to tough but objective reporting on national politics, Tapper's work continues to make an enormous contribution to the public's understanding of presidential politics," said the American Political Science Association when it honored him with an award in 2017.

Tapper was named by Mediaite in December 2023 as one of their top ten "Most Influential in News Media," with the website writing, "When a big breaking news event is unfolding, or a major interview is taking place on CNN, Jake Tapper is the man you expect to see on your screen. It’s that simple. The anchor generally holds down the 4 to 6 p.m. time slot, but so often in 2023, he helmed the desk for hours on end during marathon news events. Viewers were better for it."

In 2023, Tapper was nominated for multiple News & Documentary Emmy Awards and took home two of them, one for being part of CNN's team that won for Outstanding Live Breaking News Coverage for "Russian Invasion of Ukraine", the other for Outstanding Live News Special for "Live from the Capitol: One Year Later", which he co-anchored.

Before joining CNN, Tapper worked for ABC News as Senior White House Correspondent, where he received three Merriman Smith Memorial Awards from the White House Correspondents' Association.

Tapper helped with the coverage of the inauguration of President Obama that earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story.

Tapper was part of a team that was awarded an Edward R. Murrow Award for Video: Breaking News for "Target bin Laden: The Death of Public Enemy #1".