'I cut my teeth on Jim Hunt'

Jim Axelrod talks about covering the White House for CBS

Lucky Jim Axelrod has fallen smack dab into one of the biggest, oddest stories of his impressive career.

One week into his new job as chief White House correspondent for CBS News, Axelrod, a former WRAL reporter, sits in the front row of the White House briefing room with a press corps that may have seemed more like a firing squad to White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

For the first part of this week, McClellan's job has been to explain why it took so long to get the news out that Vice President Dick Cheney shot hunting partner Harry Whittington on Saturday. And Axelrod is now one of his inquisitors.

This isn't the first time Axelrod, who covered state politics for Raleigh station WRAL from 1993 to 1996, has been in the right place at the right time. Seven years after he joined CBS News, he was the first television journalist to report from Saddam International Airport in Baghdad immediately after its takeover by U.S. forces.

Axelrod, 43, talked to The News & Observer by cell phone Tuesday, as he took a cab to 17th and Pennsylvania for that day's White House press briefing.

"It's a fascinating story," he says of the Cheney affair. "I think it illuminates a lot of things about the way the administration works."

Q. The atmosphere between the press and the White House being somewhat contentious because of all of the stonewalling, is it difficult to maintain the appearance of fairness? You already have people on the blogosphere complaining about how the press is dogging McClellan.

A. You know what? I cut my teeth on [former North Carolina governor] Jim Hunt. This is all minor-league stuff. I think these are two very separate issues: the issue of bias, which is a very serious one, and really needs to be addressed, and any reporter needs to be thoughtful about the way they go about doing their business. But I think the administration is -- I don't think this is a point that's up for dispute -- they are extremely interested in controlling the message.

My sense is the administration considers reporters as something separate and apart from the public. I don't think reporters should ever be the story, and the way it got played on all the [cable channels], and the way it has been played in the papers -- it was all about the raucous press briefing. Well, you know what? The vice president of the United States shot someone. As Americans, aren't we all entitled to know that? It was 21 hours between the vice president shooting somebody and the public finding out, and is that an acceptable way of doing business?

Q. You were the first to report from the Iraq War. What was it like to be the first, and what circumstances made that possible?

A. I was embedded with the 3rd Infantry. My brigade -- it was all just a question of who got assigned to do what, and we were the guys that ended up taking the airport. We were never censored. We were never told what to report. There was no attempt at manipulation. We had a Humvee with a satellite dish. We could get up from anywhere in the desert to New York. We could get up in seven minutes. It takes longer to boil a hot dog than it takes to report from the runway in Baghdad.

Q. What was your lowest moment when you were in Iraq?

A. My wife was 7 1/2 months pregnant when I was in Iraq. And I called home on a satellite phone to speak to my niece -- she was having her Bat Mitzvah. And I'm standing in the desert in Iraq and it's literally hours after the first ... units have taken on the first casualties. Four guys were killed in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint.