Obama’s Press Secretary resigns

White House press secretary, Jay Carney. President Barack Obama announced Friday that his spokesman is stepping down. Photo|Courtesy|White House 

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President Barack Obama announced Friday that his White House press secretary, Jay Carney, is stepping down.

 

Mr Carney, 49, is leaving his post as the public face of the administration after shifting from two decades of reporting to politics at the highest level of US government.

And fielding questions from the press moments after Mr Obama left the podium, Mr Carney said he hadn't made up his mind on his next move.

“I haven’t made any decisions yet,” he said. I’m excited by some of the possibilities but it has been an amazing experience working here, just so fulfilling, Carney added.

Despite coming from the White House press corps himself, Mr Carney developed a sometimes contentious relationship with the news media, who at times pressed him to say more than he was willing to about the president’s policies and decision-making.

He has been described by some White House colleagues as one who brought “rare but practical experience” to the job as a former reporter who once covered the White House for Time magazine.

He left journalism to become communications director for Vice President Joe Biden and subsequently moved over to serve as Obama's press secretary in 2011.

REPORTER'S PERSPECTIVE

President Obama said Friday that Mr Carney was very much at home as the Press Secretary.

"Every morning, he comes to this place with a reporter's perspective," he told reporters after interrupting Carney mid-sentence as he responded to a question on Ukraine in the Brady Press Briefing Room. "That's why, believe it or not, I think he will miss hanging out with you," Obama said of Mr Carney.

Mr Carney will be replaced by the deputy press secretary, Josh Earnest. President Obama called Carney’s successor a person of “sound judgment and great temperament.”

Earnest has worked for Mr. Obama since the 2008 campaign, standing in for Mr. Carney at times in the briefing room.

Mr Obama, who said Carney had told him of the decision in April, said he would miss him dearly. “He is one of my closest friends here in Washington,” he said adding that Carney’s five and a half years as an administration spokesman “placed a strain on my wife and two kids.”

Carney was the second person to serve in the position during the Obama presidency, having replaced Robert Gibbs.