“The Press and the President”
Presidents have always used media and tried to manage it in various ways. Different presidents have different methods of managing the press. All presidents can manage the media effectively in the short run, but will all fail at long-term press management. Presidents have long used the media and press to help themselves. Presidents serving after the Roosevelt era have all tried to manage the news in various ways. Presidents serving before the 1930’s did not manage the news much since there was not as much coverage and press-White House relations were put on daily contact. All presidents nowadays use the media in an opportunity to recommend themselves and make themselves look good and be liked.
Presidents try to manage the news in many ways and each one has his own unique “style” of doing so. Presidents all manage the news by deciding when to release stories, whether to open meetings to press coverage, and who to tell what. President Lyndon Johnson managed the news by holding unexpected Saturday morning news conferences. Because of the unusual and bad timing, the press and media had to disrupt and rearrange their schedule to accommodate him. President Johnson also tried to manipulate the news with his useless meeting with Alexei Kosygin, the late Soviet premier. He made it seem as if they were having a major summit conference to help the USA. The press covered this “major event” and President Johnson’s ratings went up for a short period of time, only to later go down.
Reedy believes this manipulation of the press is almost always effective in the short-run, but almost always fails in the long run. A president can do some things to manipulate the news, but some are out of his control. For example, a president can time his public appearances, but not his acts. A president must do certain things at certain times, for his job, with little time to budge or manipulate. A president can