Barack Obama calls Kanye West a jackass

September 15, 2:15 PMSF News Media ExaminerConor Gallagher

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AP Photo/Jason DeCrow

During an off-the-record conversation with CNBC President Barack Obama referred to the trophy snatching Kanye West as a "jackass."

An ABC reporter overheard the conversation and promptly tweeted about it. Oops. 

ABC has apologized to CNBC and removed the tweet. 

West, who after waltzing down the red carpet swilling a bottle of cognac at the Sunday night MTV Music Awards, proceeded to jump onstage and grabbed the microphone from Taylor Swift while she was accepting the Best Female Video award. West declared that Beyonce Knowles should have won.

"But I need to, after this, just to take some time off and analyze how I'm going to, you know, make it through rest of this life, how I'm going to improve," West said on The Jay Leno Show.

Many other news media are now using the ABC tweet mishap as some profound examination of a journalist's rules for operating Twitter. 

Did the 'tweeter' think the ethical standards of journalism didn't apply to Twitter? What would President Obama now say about the ABC tweeter?