Jake Tapper took RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to task for comparing President Obama to Captain Francesco Schettino, the Italian captain of the Costa Concordia. “Help me out here,” Tapper tweeted. “It’s ok to make light of horrific ship crashes if the people who died weren’t Americans?” He added the hashtag, “#stayclassy”

A new poll out from Florida shows Mitt Romney with a 15-point lead over Newt Gingrich, and on ABC’s This Week today, Jake Tapper asked how Gingrich’s Florida numbers will end up impacting the rest of the race. George Will didn’t mince words, declaring right out that Gingrich does not have time on his side, and the more time he has, the more he talks, and the more he talks, the more he makes somewhat divisive remarks.

The newest story out of the Republican primary race for the presidency is that a civil war has broken out between establishment Republicans who favor Mitt Romney and conservative activists who are lining up behind Newt Gingrich. One of the most powerful lines of attack against Gingrich is that he’s unelectable against President Obama, but there are doubts among Republicans and conservatives that Romney is that much more electable in the general election.

On This Week today, Newt Gingrich owned up to his poor debate performances last week, but implied that the reason he was not as effective in conveying his message was because he was so distracted by how much Mitt Romney was lying on the debate stage. Substitute host Jake Tapper asked Gingrich if his pledge to go all the way to the convention would still stand even if the math doesn’t work out in his favor during the long primary season.

Lately, GOP leading lights Sarah Palin and former Sen. Rick Santorum have taken up the conservative pastime of hiding their anti-gay politics behind the lie that their views mirror those of President Obama. At today’s White House briefing, Metro Weekly‘s Chris Geidner and I tried to get Press Secretary Jay Carney to put some daylight between the President and Santorum on the issue of marriage equality, and while he defended President Obama’s overall record on LGBT issues, Carney was mum on marriage.

Regular viewers of the three big broadcast news shows — ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News — have probably come to admire some of the reporters and correspondents featured on air each night. But have you ever stopped to wonder which reporter has logged the most airtime?

Ron Paul rebuffed ABC News’s Jake Tapper on Sunday’s This Week, when he had brought up a quote by former senior campaign aide Eric Dondero, saying the Republican presidential candidate had engaged in 9/11 conspiracy theories. “About the conspiracy of Bush — of Bush knowing about this?” Paul responded incredulously. “No, no, come on! Come on! Let’s be reasonable! That’s just off-the-wall!”

In the world of the microscopic news cycle, a year is a mighty long time. Think “dog years” on steroids. Over the course of the past year, in thousands (around 7,500 ) of articles and millions (between 3 and 4 million) of words, Mediaite has covered the ups and downs of that whizzing, ricocheting media world. In case you lost track in that sea of information, we’ve compiled a list of 2011 Media Winners and Losers that we hope will be the start  of a conversation, not the end of one. Here, in no particular order, are Mediaite’s 2011 Media Winners and Losers.

ABC News’s Jake Tapper took White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to task over a comment Vice President Joe Biden made to Newsweek, saying “the Taliban per se is not our enemy.” Tapper asked if the language Biden used was regrettable. “if taken out of context.” “It’s only regrettable when taken out of context that I just explained,” Carney responded.

After a streak that, I think, endured the whole of human history, the subject of bestiality has now come up twice during White House briefings this month. In a quasi-friendly exchange this afternoon, ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper let out some annoyance at Press Secretary Jay Carney for skipping around the room, and sarcastically told Carney “No, America wants to know about your position on bestiality,” a reference to a Les Kinsolving question from last week.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has had tongues wagging in the political media for the past couple of days, based on what has to be the weirdest attack ad ever. The ad is weird because it doesn’t contain a single mention of any of his opponents, or anything at all, other than Mitt Romney. It portrays the GOP presidential hopeful as a steady family man, and a loyal company man, but an adviser for Newt Gingrich knows what’s really going on, telling ABC News that the ad “is basically Romney saying ‘My family is better than your family.’ It’s going to backfire.”

Lost in all the hoopla surrounding the ad is how deeply it cuts, not at Newt Gingrich, but at Mitt Romney.

At Monday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to show a little Christmas generosity by calling on WorldNetDaily correspondent Les Kinsolving near the top of the briefing. For his trouble, Carney is now under fire from PETA for supposedly “making light of bestiality” because he laughed at, and waved off, Kinsolving’s less-than-seriously-phrased question about a defense authorization bill that repealed the sodomy provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich audaciously declared in an interview with ABC News’s Jake Tapper that he would end up winning the Republican nomination. “I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee,” Gingrich affirmed.

Jake Tapper‘s tweet of bizarre “no comment” boilerplate had all the makings of an Onion parody: “”…a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, declined to comment on the candidate’s hairstyle, or to make Mr. Romney available to discuss it.”

It was no joke, but rather, a quote from The New York Times‘ straight-faced report on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s fantastic hair.

On the heels of his “To Catch A Journalist” sting video, conservative activist James O’Keefe sat for a nearly 30-minute interview for Mediaite on Monday, discussing his attacks on Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, his discrediting of Rutgers Professor Jeff Keefe, and his infamous “CNN Caper.”

In the final portion of our interview, I asked O’Keefe for his thoughts on mainstream journalism, and he revealed that some of his journalistic heroes include Mike Wallace and Jake Tapper.

At Friday afternoon’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to a story that’s scorching up the conservative blogosphere as the next Solyndra-style “scandal” to emerge from a loan guarantee program begun by George W. Bush, and expanded by the Obama administration. ABC News‘ Jake Tapper asked Carney to respond to his network’s report on a $529 million loan guarantee to a company called “Fisker,” that is producing an electric car in Finland.

Currently, the news catnip du jour for conservatives are Solyndra and Fast and Furious. Today, conservative media watchdog Newsbusters expressed outrage that a Fast and Furious question was left out of ABC News broadcasts of Jake Tapper‘s exclusive interview with President Obama. Fortunately, we’ve got the exchange here.

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with ABC News’ Jake Tapper, President Obama said he’s not worried about who the Republican nominee is going to be, and told Tapper that the GOP candidates’ ideas aren’t anything new. “There’s going to be a very clear contrast,” the President said, “between whoever they nominate and their vision of where we should take the country and where I believe we should take the country.”

At a joint press conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Fox News’ Ed Henry asked the President to respond to a quote from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over recent actions by Iran, to which President Obama replied, “I didn’t know you were the spokesperson for Mitt Romney.”

Minutes later, Megyn Kelly asked Henry for his reaction, and he defended the question, and said the President “decided not to engage with Mitt Romney, instead decided to kind of go after me a little bit.”

Since becoming Fox News’ Senior White House Correspondent in July, beat veteran Ed Henry has endured several barbs from Press Secretary Jay Carney, but today, it was President Obama needling Henry. At a joint press conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Henry asked the President to respond to a quote from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over recent actions by Iran, to which President Obama replied, “I didn’t know you were the spokesperson for Mitt Romney.”

On This Week today, Christiane Amanpour brought up a point often raised about any potential candidacy undertaken by Chris Christie: whether his weight problem would be a negative with voters or not. However, while the panelists didn’t seem to agree with that sentiment, Jake Tapper suggested the grueling work of a presidential candidacy might be [...]

At Wednesday’s White House briefing, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked Press Secretary Jay Carney about his criticism of GOP candidates for not reacting to the booing of a gay soldier at last week’s Republican debate, and drew a comparison between that incident and the White House’s response to remarks by Teamster head James Hoffa several weeks ago. Carney rejected the premise outright, and in a later email to Mediaite, explains why it’s “not an apt comparison.”

The pushback against Ron Suskind‘s upcoming (but leaked) book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President continued today, as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney fielded questions about some of the book’s tales of intrigue. Geithner flatly denied that he disregarded an order from the President, while Carney attacked the book as fundamentally unreliable, and possibly plagiarized from Wikipedia.

So far, it appears that ABC News is the only network to cover a controversial new book shedding a harsh light on the goings-on within Obama’s White House. On Monday, Good Morning America‘s George Stephanopoulos intoduced a segment on the book by calling Ron Suskind‘s Confidence Men nothing short of a “bombshell.” Jake Tapper then outlined the allegations contained therein, including charges of sexism, in-fighting among aides and general incompetence within the administration.

In the hours since the Jimmy Hoffa Voter Encouragement Crisis/Incendiary Rhetorapocalypse, conservative media figures have looked to the White House to provide some becalming wisdom to a shaken nation. At Tuesday’s White House briefing, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Press Secretary Jay Carney how Hoffa’s comments fit with the President’s post-Tucson remarks in January.