The President and the News Media

A comprehensive examination of press-presidential relations in the era since 1960.

Studying the increasingly powerful role television plays in the political process, Smoller offers a persuasive argument that the "big three" network coverage of the presidency is gradually eroding public support for and confidence in that office. This book argues that network coverage of the presidency is determined by the political, technical, and commercial nature of the medium itself, producing a bias toward negative coverage. Attempts by the White House to combat these negative portrayals by managing news coverage and isolating the president will subvert democratic values.

Kuypers combines rhetorical theory and framing analysis in an examination of the interaction of the press and the president during international crisis situations in the post-Cold War world. Three crises are examined: Bosnia, Haiti, and the North Korean nuclear capability issue. Kuypers effectively demonstrates the changed nature of presidential crisis rhetoric since the end of the Cold War.

This study challenges the notions that the U.S. press is either an active participant in the foreign policy process or an instrument of presidential manipulation. Based on a content analysis of New York Times' reporting of five recent foreign policy disasters, Berry explores the thesis that the press accepts administration assumptions on foreign policy matters, but only until the policy fails. The work also addresses the differences between domestic and foreign policy reporting, and compares the work of foreign-based correspondents with that of U.S.-based reporters.

This book challenges generally accepted views by concluding that the critical press, so often characterized by pro-New Deal historians as conservative or reactionary, was in fact a good deal more "liberal" than Roosevelt and his advisors. Without its opposition to Roosevelt's policies during the years before Congress began to reassert its constitutional responsibilities, the United States might well have deviated considerably from the path of constitutional and democratic government.

Through a long public life and short presidency, Herbert Hoover carefully cultivated reporters and media owners as he rose from a relief administrator to president of the United States. During his service to government, he held the conviction that journalists were to be manipulated and mistrusted. When the nation fell into economic disaster, Hoover's misconceptions about the press and press relations exacerbated a national calamity. This book traces the entire history of Hoover's relationship with magazines, newspapers, newsreel organizations, and radio, and demonstrates how an attitude toward the U.S. press can help or hinder a public figure throughout his career. The book draws upon diaries of Hoover aides, oral histories from journalists and other media figures, newspaper and magazine clippings, radio broadcasts, newsreels, public documents, archival manuscripts, and a plethora of published secondary books and articles. This may be the most complete and best-documented study of a single president and the,media.