Presidents and the Media

The Communicator in Chief

Stephen E. Frantzich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138479807
• eBook ISBN: 9781351064729
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Is Donald Trump's "War on the Media" new news, fake news, or business as usual? Presidents have always "used" the media and felt abused by it. Tried and true vehicles such as press conferences, routine speeches and the State of the Union address have served presidents' interests and received significant coverage by the print media. As new technologies have entered the media spectrum, the speed and pervasiveness of these interactions have changed dramatically. President Obama ushered in the social media presidency, while President Trump has become the tweeter-in-chief. This book shows how each of these developments affects what is communicated and how it is received by the public.

CHAPTER 1

PRESIDENTS AND THE MEDIA IN A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

Representative democracy is a multidirectional conversation between citizens and elected officials. Presidents play a preeminent role in this conversation, suggesting topics, promoting solutions and reacting to events. In order to play a role, the president’s message must be received by the target, understood, seen as relevant and credible.¹

The Public’s Need for News

Many of the president’s efforts fall into the category of “munication,” that is, communication without the “co.” If no one is paying attention, or sloughing off the messages as irrelevant or not credible, the president’s efforts are wasted. It is the media that help identify issues, frame problems, outline solutions, and crystallize opinions.

Effective conversations are based on the exchange of valid information. A fully informed electorate is a luxury to be sought but seldom reached:

The founders of our country saw a well-informed citizenry as the bedrock of our system, and assumed that the communication among citizens and between citizens and elected representatives would take place in a way that lifted the best available evidence to the top, where it received more attention than all the noise below.²

Unless we share some information it is impossible to carry on a meaningful political conversation. We need to define terms and share some assumptions about how the world works. These shared islands of understanding fill in the gaps between bits of new information we glean in the political conversation. The media play an important role in creating these shared understandings on which useful conversations are based.

Few of us experience American politics directly. “Almost all of what Americans know about national politics, the U.S. Government, their fellow citizens, and the larger world is communicated through the media … for practical purposes, media reality is political reality.”³ In our vicarious viewing of politics and government we are dependent on media choices and interpretations. As Grossman and Kumar stated in their classic study, presidential “[r]eality as refracted through the lens of the news media is for most people their only glimpse at what is going on at the White House.”⁴

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the media in a political system. “Democracies are fragile. … They need informed and engaged citizens to survive.”⁵ Citizens cannot form their views or make an educated choice among candidates without good information. The media are the only feasible way to spread objective information to the public. Relying on political leaders alone to raise issues and promote solutions threatens to provide biased information supporting current policies and regimes.

Political participation has relatively little value in the abstract. Politics is a method by which societal problems are discovered and support for solutions created. From the individual citizen’s perspective, participation is important when the issue is relevant to them and they have the tools to affect the outcome. If one cares little about an issue and its possible solution, participation is little more than a hollow ritual. On the other hand, failure to participate in the development and solution of an issue of personal interest creates frustration and dissatisfaction. There is such a thing as “rational apathy” when the individual has no interest in an issue that will not affect him or her and/or lacks the knowledge and tools to participate. Knowing that the issue has already been decided or that the system is completely stacked against your interests is an invitation to concentrate one’s efforts elsewhere. It is the media that helps individuals understand the issues under consideration, the potential impact of proffered solutions, and the tools for getting one’s voice heard.

Political observers both among the public and the media are tempted to ask, “Why can’t the media and the president just work together to provide the information needed to understand what is going on?” Such a position ignores the inherent tension stemming from the different goals of each of the three players. From the public’s perspective the goal is to “satisfice” one’s information, gathering enough to understand realms in which they are interested. Few news consumers seek to maximize information for fear that it will overwhelm them. For many members of the news audience, the goal lies in reinforcing one’s current opinions rather than challenging them. For the president, the goal lies in good media coverage to undergird his leadership capabilities. The media, on the other hand, seeks to make a profit by maximizing both the size and content of its audience.

While this book will focus primarily on presidents in office, numerous commentators have pointed out that modern presidents are involved in a “permanent campaign,” with every action taking into account either their reelection and/or the fate of their fellow party members in congressional campaigns.⁶ Drawing the line between presidents acting as presidents and them acting as candidates becomes more difficult to draw.

In a representative democracy, the public plays a role in selecting, directing, and evaluating the president. Ideally the media “peels back the curtain,” to provide the public the ability to carry out their task. In the words of George W. Bush, “We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.”⁷

The President’s Need for Media Coverage

Presidents do not crave media attention for the sake of attention. Positive media attention has the potential for increasing the president’s power relative to other political players and to eventually lead to the adoption of his preferred policy outcomes. Negative media attention, on the other hand, has the opposite effect, threatening to take resources away from the focus of the president and his staff on the issues in which they are most interested. The ability to use the media to set the agenda has the potential to enhance the president’s success in Congress.⁸

Discussions of contemporary presidents’ “permanent campaign” activity⁹ point out the difficulty of separating campaigning from governing. As Bill Clinton’s press secretary put it:

Campaigns are about framing choices for Americans. … When you are responsible for governing you have to use the same tools of public persuasion to advance your program, to build public support for the direction you are attempting to lead.¹⁰

From the earliest days, presidents have used the news media to communicate with the public. At George Washington’s request, his farewell address was published in a daily newspaper. Two centuries later, President Ronald Reagan chose the medium of the day—television—to give his farewell address.¹¹ President Jefferson played a key role in developing a new newspaper for the nation’s capitol when he encouraged the creation of the National Intelligencer as an outlet to get his message to the people.¹²

Presidents are acutely aware of the importance of positive media coverage and the support it generates among the people. President Clinton pointed out that the key to political success was the president’s unparalleled “access to the people through his communications network.”¹³ Clinton viewed positive coverage as the ability to “create new political capital all the time.”¹⁴ His staff sought to “deliberately and relentlessly communicate [the president’s] program to the public.”¹⁵

Presidential Approval

A president’s popularity, whether measured by specific public opinion polls or in general terms by the media, is more than a vehicle for massaging the president’s ego or warning him of shortcomings in his performance. Popularity is “said to be a political resource that can help him achieve his program, keep challengers at bay, and guide his and other political leaders’ expectations about the president’s party’s prospects in presidential and congressional elections.”¹⁶ When the president receives positive coverage, his approval remains high, while negative coverage is associated with a decline.¹⁷ Correlation, though, does not necessarily mean causation. A president’s news coverage may be negative because of declining popularity, rather than vice versa. It is also clear that high presidential popularity is associated with legislative success,¹⁸ but again it is not clear whether popularity leads to success or vice versa.

Two decades ago, researchers concluded that “a president’s overall reputation, and to a lesser extent, his apparent competence, both depend upon the presentation of network news programs.”¹⁹ Today that is still true with television news being augmented by other news venues such as blogs and news alerts. Presidential approval by the public is an important power resource for a president. As one staff member put it, “When you go up to the Hill and the latest polls show [the president] isn’t doing well, then there isn’t much reason for a member to go along with him.”²⁰ A member of Congress chimed in his support by saying, “The relationship between the President and Congress is partly the result of how well the President is doing politically. Congress is better behaved when he does well.”²¹

There is a temptation to view seeking fame and adulation as a self-serving activity incompatible with the idea of unselfish public service. As far back as the Constitutional Convention, James Wilson argued that:

the love of honest and well-earned fame is deeply ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Special Features
• Chapter 1 Presidents and the Media in a Representative Democracy
• Chapter 2 The President as a News Hook: The First “W”
• Chapter 3 Covering the White House
• Chapter 4 The White House PR Machine
• Chapter 5 Delivering the President’s Message
• Chapter 6 Presidential Media Events
• Chapter 7 Old Basics, New Technologies
• Chapter 8 The President and Popular Media
• Chapter 9 Ongoing Media Relationships and How to Deal with Them
• Index