Jacob Paul Tapper (born March 12, 1969) is an American journalist. 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.
At CNN, Tapper has won numerous journalism awards, including Emmy Awards in 2023 and in 2024. TheWrap described him as "perhaps the network's most respected anchor". In September 2015, the Republican primary debate moderated by Tapper, and including Donald Trump, 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". On June 27, 2024, Tapper co-moderated a debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump watched by more than 51 million viewers and influenced Biden's subsequent decision to end his 2024 presidential campaign.
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 contributed to the coverage of the inauguration of President Obama that earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story. He was also 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".
Tapper is the author of several books, including The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, which 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 veterans and troops were cited when the Congressional Medal of Honor Society awarded him the "Tex" McCrary Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Tapper was born in New York City but raised in Queen Village, Philadelphia, the son of Theodore Samuel "Ted" and Helen Anne (née Palmatier) Tapper. His mother, originally from Canada, worked 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 at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, a Jewish summer camp.
Tapper attended The Philadelphia School, an independent school focused on progressive education. As an eighth grader, he published a weekly comic strip in a local paper. Tapper later studied at Akiba Hebrew Academy, a Jewish day school in Merion, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1991 with a B.A. in History modified by Visual Studies, earning Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude honors. 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 served as a spokesman for Hooters and worked for Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) in 1997.
In 1998, after working for some time as a freelance writer, he was hired as a reporter by the Washington City Paper. During his two years with the paper, he wrote an article about his 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. 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.
In 2001, Tapper was the host of the CNN news talk show Take Five. He 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 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. 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.
Tapper was named Senior White House Correspondent on November 5, 2008, the day after the 2008 presidential election. 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.
Tapper was a candidate to replace George Stephanopoulos as anchor of This Week , but CNN's Christiane Amanpour was selected instead. Tapper served as the interim anchor until Amanpour took over on August 1, 2010. Ultimately, Amanpour went back to CNN and Stephanopoulous decided he wanted to return to the position.
Tapper contributed regularly to Good Morning America, Nightline, and World News with Diane Sawyer. In addition to anchoring World News and Good Morning America weekend editions and Nightline, Tapper was a frequent substitute host of This Week and served as interim host for much of 2010, scoring the first TV interview with CIA director Leon Panetta, as well as exclusives with Vice President Biden, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, retired General Colin Powell, and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, in addition to interviews with other newsmakers, such as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky).
As senior White House correspondent, Tapper interviewed President Obama several times. Before his assignment at the White House, Tapper was ABC News' national/senior political correspondent based in the network's Washington, D.C., bureau. He contributed a report to a broadcast of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings that won the 2005 Edward R. Murrow Award for best network newscast. As ABC News' lead reporter covering the 2008 presidential election, he received recognition for both breaking stories and even-handedness.
Traveling from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina and beyond, Tapper interviewed both Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois), as well as other White House hopefuls including former Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
It was announced December 20, 2012, that Tapper would join CNN and would anchor a new weekday program and serve as the network's chief Washington correspondent. He began with CNN in January 2013, hosting his own program, The Lead with Jake Tapper.
The Lead with Jake Tapper won three National Headliner Awards for its reporting in 2013. Among broadcast television networks, cable networks and syndicators, The Lead with Jake Tapper won first prize for its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and second prize for its coverage of the Oklahoma tornadoes in the category of "Coverage of a Major News Event." It won third prize for its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing in the category of "Continuing Coverage of a Major News Event." In 2014, The Lead was honored for a series of reports on academic fraud at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by correspondent Sara Ganim with a Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting.