THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS
April 25, 2001

Terence Smith looks at President Bush's relationship with the media during the first 100 days of his presidency. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

Online Special: President Bush's First 100 Days Online Special Media Watch April 11, 2001: Four columnists on President Bush's handling of the China spy plane incident. Feb. 1, 2001: Editorial page editors on the early days of the Bush Administration. Jan. 17, 2001: Four columnists look at the John Ashcroft hearings. Online Special Covering Election 2000 Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the media     News for Students: A look at President George W. Bush's first 100 days in office.   The White House	TERENCE SMITH: The first 100 days, the so-called "honeymoon" period for a new president and the press. It is often the time when the media takes the measure of a man, and helps create an image that can last for an entire presidency. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: I think they have given him a very generous ride in the beginning. BILL PLANTE: There's been relatively little controversy on the inside. KENNETH WALSH: Its difficult for a honeymoon to last very long anymore, as President Bush is discovering. TERENCE SMITH: The presidential image is shaped on a daily basis. ARI FLEISCHER: Good afternoon. TERENCE SMITH: Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, says dealing with the White House press corps requires substance, patience and humor. ARI FLEISCHER: Sometimes I think the White House press won't be satisfied until there is president-cam in the Oval Office, so they can watch him 24 hours a day with everything he does. We work very hard to work with the White House press corps, but I know always it will never be enough. TERENCE SMITH: The White House media has grown in size and changed in attitude since John F. Kennedy first used television to craft his image. TV SPOKESMAN: Washington's new State Department auditorium is the scene of John F. Kennedy's first presidential news conference, the first ever broadcast live to the nation. KENNETH WALSH: He tried to ingratiate himself with the media. TERENCE SMITH: Kenneth Walsh, White House correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, wrote the book Feeding the Beast, about the relationship between presidents and the press. KENNETH WALSH: Largely because of Watergate, and Vietnam and the Clinton impeachment situation, we have a cynicism on our side in the media that's going to be very difficult to change. So I don't think you could replicate the Kennedy situation. There's just too much hostility in the air. TERENCE SMITH: Nonetheless, most presidents start out trying to have cordial relations with the White House media. PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: I always want to remain accessible. And I hope that the press will never be critical of me for being over accessible.
	Joking with the press
	TERENCE SMITH: George W. Bush regularly jokes in front of the press. Here, he is asked if he has gotten Vice President Cheney a birthday present. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: As a matter of fact... some used coffee cake, perhaps, Mr. Vice President. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: He has a very nice way with reporters in terms of rapport. TERENCE SMITH: Alexis Simendinger covers the White House for National Journal. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: He nicknames them, he remembers them from the campaign, he remembers things about their family life, their children. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: When's your baby due? ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: He is very -- a personable person, and he does try to relate to reporters one on one. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Ann, good to see you. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: Does it change the way they cover him, not a bit. I don't believe that it changes their disposition toward his agenda or his policies at all. TERENCE SMITH: The president has won points for his self-deprecating humor, which was on display before the recent Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I actually said this in New Hampshire. "I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve." I don't have the slightest idea what I was saying there. TERENCE SMITH: In his apparent ease with the press corps, George Bush may seem like his father, who spoke informally to the media, early and often. PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: I hate to do this, but there has been a tremendous demand to answer a couple of questions. TERENCE SMITH: Political scientist Martha Joynt Kumar has studied presidents for a quarter century. She says the differences between the two Bushes are as striking as the similarities. MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: His son puts much more emphasis on communications than did his father. His father was not interested in communications, did not have a large communications apparatus that thought in terms of message. TERENCE SMITH: This presidents' press style is more reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's. The "Great Communicator" had a tightly controlled White House communications operation and press access to the president was so limited, that reporters took to shouting questions at him on the White House lawn. REPORTER: We haven't heard from you in a while. PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: What? REPORTER: We haven't heard from you in a while. What have you got to say? KENNETH WALSH: People just, in the end, didn't care about a lot of the issues that we in the media were focused on with Reagan. Whether he was engaged enough, whether he had the energy to be president, whether he was smart enough -- some of the things we see today with President Bush.
	Managing the message
	TERENCE SMITH: For George W. Bush, managing the message is key. The president has five or six themes that he and his staff hammer home. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: It is in our nation's best interest to have long term tax relief. And that has been my focus all along. BILL PLANTE: Bush himself is far more involved and interested, I think, than Ronald Reagan was. TERENCE SMITH: CBS news correspondent Bill Plante has covered Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and now Bush. BILL PLANTE: They have managed the message successfully in that what they have done on a day-to-day basis generally tracks what they want to talk about. What we want to talk about isn't always the same thing. TERENCE SMITH: Ari Fleischer is not apologetic. This White House, he says, will continue to deliver its message any way it can. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I like to get out of Washington, Bill. TERENCE SMITH: Including using local media, which insiders believe is often less critical, and more sympathetic. ARI FLEISCHER: The White House press corps, the Washington press corps, typically covers more of what I call the "sport" of this business. "In a victory for... today President Bush." And the substance of what President Bush proposed is typically toward the bottom of the story. The local press corps covers much more of the policy toward the top of the story. They are much less interested in telling their readers who won and who lost. TERENCE SMITH: But efforts to control the story of the day can backfire. Outside events have a way of inserting themselves. TERENCE SMITH: Is there such a thing as controlling the message too much? ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: Usually, what you see is that a press corps that rebels against that -- especially a press corps that is very tightly, physically, geographically confined to a secure place like the White House is. SPOKESMAN: Watch the cables. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER: All presidents figure out, I think, sooner or later that the down side is that if you don't tell your story yourself, and if you are not candid enough to try to open up the doors to the questioning press corps, that they will find a way to tell the story for you. And that's not usually a way you like. TERENCE SMITH: George W. Bush and his staff are painfully aware of the early communications mistakes made by previous presidents, including the first President Bush. This administration seems determined not to repeat those mistakes, and they have assembled a team of aides that includes some well versed in the ways of Washington. MARTHA JOYNT KUMAR: In a sense, you create your own luck. Republicans come in in a far more organized manner than Democrats in recent years have tended to do. They didn't focus during the transition in setting up their White House, getting things organized. TERENCE SMITH: In fact, by general consensus, Bill Clinton squandered his honeymoon with self-inflicted political wounds over gays in the military and aborted cabinet nominations. BILL PLANTE: There was too much going on and too much of what was going on was controversial. There was disorder everywhere, chaos, people screaming in and out of the Oval Office, endless meetings, late night pizza, people wearing jeans. You name it. So there was no shortage of stories out of here in January, February, March of 1993.
	Clinton controversies
	TERENCE SMITH: And Plante says, controversies surrounding Bill Clinton as he left the White House -- the pardons, the pricey New York office space -- were a boon to the incoming Bush administration. BILL PLANTE: He came into office with this enormous gift. The gift was the way Bill Clinton left this place. I mean, by comparison he had to look good, at least for a little while. TERENCE SMITH: Ari Fleischer thinks the press went too far. ARI FLEISCHER: The Washington press corps couldn't let the poor man go. The American people already had. TERENCE SMITH: So you think it was overkill? ARI FLEISCHER: I do. TERENCE SMITH: The press secretary describes the early coverage of President Bush as "fair," but even he recognizes that the honeymoon will not last when contentious issues arise. ARI FLEISCHER: Invariably the press coverage turns, it always will, and now we are into the serious policy mode. I'd like to say that the rubber is hitting the road. TERENCE SMITH: And the continuous cycle of news, on cable, local television and the Internet, raises the stakes. BILL PLANTE: This keeps everybody on edge all the time. Forces the administration, any administration, to respond more quickly than they might have. TERENCE SMITH: Does that affect, or at least potentially affect a honeymoon, and a president's standing with the press? BILL PLANTE: It has a potential effect on everything the White House does. Missteps are easier. SPOKESMAN: 15 seconds... TERENCE SMITH: Because news travels so quickly, and is universally available... SPOKESMAN: In Washington today... TERENCE SMITH: ...editors and producers today demand more "edge" in stories out of the White House. KENNETH WALSH: The feeling is that if you do a hard-edged story that is about conflict, and that is critical, you are much more likely to get played in your news organizations, have the story taken seriously, and played up, than if you do a positive story. The idea of conflict, the idea of criticism is the coin of the realm.
	Straight reporting
	TERENCE SMITH: In the inside-the-beltway world of Washington, can it be that straight reporting of the new president's agenda is no longer considered news? ARI FLEISCHER: There is a problem in the media, and the problem is that viewership is declining, readership is declining, and I think journalists have to fundamentally ask themselves why? Are they distancing themselves too much from the readers and the viewers they serve? Is their mindset fundamentally different from the people who they serve? And that is something that I think particularly the Washington press corps has to examine. TERENCE SMITH: In the meantime, as the traditional honeymoon period slips away, Ken Walsh believes the true George W. Bush is becoming apparent. KENNETH WALSH: He is not this easygoing guy that often comes across because he does want to get some things accomplished. I think the question with him is, is he flexible enough to deal with changing circumstances that every president has to deal with? That's, I think, the subtext of this 100-day period. TERENCE SMITH: The next 100 days may provide the answers.

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