The Media and the President

Friday, August 11th, 2017

**Follow this link to watch Dr. Wendland's presentation on YouTube.**

On Tuesday, July 22nd, Dr. Jay Wendland from Daemen College continued our lecture series with his talk, “The Media and the President: Who Shapes Whom?”  This topic is always relevant, but particularly so in our current political climate, and this historical analysis provides an invaluable tool for understanding the daily news.

Dr. Wendland started off by addressing, as he called it, “The elephant in the room”: Donald Trump on Twitter. He specifically mentioned the President feeling comfortable in a very adversarial relationship with the media, citing labels of “fake news.” He went on to place Donald Trump’s use of Twitter as a part of a larger phenomenon in the political world, called “going public,” or cutting out the media middleman.

He then brought up TR, saying that he was one of the first Presidents to try to use the media to shape the narrative of the political happenings of the day. He then made the important note that the only outlet that Theodore Roosevelt had readily available to him during his presidency was the newspapers. He credited Theodore Roosevelt, saying that he was very good at using them for his own ends. Dr. Wendland then specified that his purpose was to garner public support for his policies and craft a narrative to be more successful.

He then talked about the relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and the “muckrakers,” such as Upton Sinclair, quoting him to the effect that he approved of their reporting as long as it was truthful, as that was a condition for its usefulness. He then made the obligatory comparison to our current political climate, and the differences in the attitudes towards modern “muckraking” reporting.

After Theodore Roosevelt, Dr. Wendland went into detail about each of the Presidents’ relationships with the media between TR and today. He highlighted Wilson’s belief that it was his duty to hold press conferences, despite only holding three during his second term because of the First World War and concerns about national security. He also highlighted Warren G. Harding liking the media until Teapot Dome, and “Silent” Calvin Coolidge having lived up to his nickname. He proceeded on through the twentieth century, through Truman’s big shake ups, which included embracing the adversarial relationship, to the profound ways that the relationship between the President and the media changed after Watergate. He then went on to consider the modern press conference, as well as possible alternatives to the press conference altogether.

-- William Wynkoop, TR Site Interpreter / Programming Assistant

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Speaker Nite is part of the TR Site’s regular Tuesday evening programming, which is made possible with generous support from M&T Bank, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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