Yesterday, it was announced that Jay Carney, the current director of communications for Vice President Joe Biden and a former Washington bureau chief for Time
magazine, will be selected as the new White House press secretary. While we here at Political Girl were rooting for a woman and in particular this woman, we are pleased that the new spokesman for the Obama administration has a well accomplished woman beside him. Claire Shipman is a veteran reporter for ABC News
and regularly reports for Good Morning America in her role as Senior National Correspondent. Before coming to the ABC News in 2001, Shipman was a White House correspondent for NBC News since 1997. Many have wondered if a partisan spokesperson and reporter relationship is ethically correct or if ABC News would somehow be at an advantage because of his role in the administration. Mr. Carney believes that it can work and even said so in an interview with the Washington Post in 2009.
Washington Post: One of the most notable members of the press corps is your wife, Claire Shipman, correspondent for ABC News. How do you avoid blurting out scoops over the dinner table?
Carney: I just don't, partly because we don't get to see each other that much thanks to my new job...We're figuring it out as I go. She's not a beat reporter at the White House. That's something she did before. She does some political stories. I tell her, 'Call Gibbs, call Rahm' or something like that when she's working on something. Because I can't be a source. But she's cool with that.
What do you think of the pick of Jay Carney? A good fit or a bad choice. Sound off below.
