Press Conferences and Censorship

Definition: Meetings organized formally to acquaint the media with news or other information

Significance: Press conferences are often attempts to stage-manage the news in order to mold public opinion through selective dissemination of information

The primary reason to call a press conference is to tell a story one’s own way. The media are thus enlisted as potential allies in getting one’s message across to the public. Press conferences are not “real” events, such as baseball games, murders, or wars. They are initiatives to gain publicity, influence public opinion, and showcase one’s best image. While they can be newsworthy, press conferences are efforts to control what the public knows and thinks. As they are tightly managed events, reporters and others must ask themselves what the sponsors are trying to tell them and what the sponsors are trying to prevent them from knowing and why.

Press conferences are generally called only when something of major importance has occurred or is contemplated. The key to conducting a successful press conference is controlling the content of what appears to be a completely unpredictable forum. In fact, the press conference is a scripted event, with the roles to be played and the topics to be discussed clearly defined. On the surface, a press conference is a straightforward affair. It is a question-and-answer session, with multiple interviewers called to collect news and to question news sources. Reporters are sometimes given special interview opportunities afterward to maximize the impact of the events.

Underneath its theater, press conferences are more than mere meetings with the press to “get ink.” Presidents, chief executive officers, religious leaders, scientists, sports figures, and others use them to communicate their plans and policy objectives, and to gain support to achieve them, as well as to launch trial balloons to test public attitudes. Political leaders and others control the agenda by restructuring reporters’ questions to make their points better, by planting questions, and by selectively recognizing friendly reporters. The sponsor decides when a press conference will be called, where it will be held, how long it will last, and what ground rules will prevail. Individual reporters are often limited to a single question each.

Press Conference Ground Rules

Protocols have developed concerning press conference conduct. For example, remarks may be “off the record,” which means the information may not be used in a story. “On-the-record” comments may be attributed to the speaker. When information is given “on background,” a specific source cannot be identified, although general descriptions of the position such as “a White House source” are permitted. No attribution is allowed if the information is given as “deep background.”

The ancestor of the America press conference was the private interview. President Andrew Johnson offered interviews to selected reporters during his impeachment trial because he sensed that the public was reading published interviews more closely than his own speeches.

Presidential Press Conferences

The modern presidential press conference itself began as a news leak. President Theodore Roosevelt pioneered written news releases and “leaking” information to favored reporters to assist in winning support for his legislative program. Any reporter who broke Roosevelt’s rules—especially the one requiring that information given in confidence must remain confidential—would be banned from the White House and be denied future access to legitimate news. The president preempted journalistic discretion by retaining control over which stories could be reported and how.

President Woodrow Wilson initiated regular news conferences in 1913, and immediately used the press as a sounding board for U.S. intervention in the Mexican Revolution. A breach of confidentiality at one press conference threatened the future of open press conferences. The White House and the press corps agreed that the corps would be responsible for policing the president’s press conferences.

Early press conferences were informal small group discussions governed by special rules. Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover required questions be submitted in advance in writing. No verbatim quotes were allowed without special permission. Reporters were willing to play by the rules because they were given the opportunity of having frank exchanges with presidents willing to take reporters into their confidence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dispensed with written questions but permitted his staff members to plant questions among receptive reporters. He permitted occasional direct quotations if White House permission were granted, and he required that off-the-record remarks could not be repeated to absent reporters.

On December 16, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took a historic step in putting the entire news conference on the record. A recording of his December 16 meeting was released to the radio networks, which was the first time the public could listen to an entire presidential news conference. Eisenhower held the first televised presidential news conference on January 19, 1955, after he became upset over negative portrayals of his presidency in the press. He used the conferences to go directly to the people with favorable news so that they would rely less on journalistic interpretations. Eisenhower compelled the television networks to film the press conferences in a pool arrangement and then submit the film to the White House for editing.

The first live telecast of a presidential press conference was conducted by President John F. Kennedy on January 25, 1961. Kennedy continued the protocols of his predecessors. He opened the session with a formal announcement and was followed by recognition of the senior Associated Press or United Press International correspondent. Other reporters were then called upon as—and if—they caught the president’s eye. The conferences still ran thirty minutes and ended when the senior news service correspondent said, “Thank you, Mr. President.” Kennedy broke tradition, however, by holding special news conferences with publishers and reporters of papers from particular states or regions. Later presidents have thrown reporters off balance by holding impromptu and short-notice press conferences.

Press conferences can be risky for reporters. A television reporter in San Antonio, Texas, for example, was fired in 1992 for being too persistent in his questioning of President George Bush at a news conference following a drug summit with Latin American leaders.

Presidents, business executives, and others have used press conferences to tell stories their way. The press conference may be a pseudo-event; however, it is one that enables the stage management or control of the news.

Bibliography

Scott M. Cutlip’s The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994) analyzes the practice of public relations in the twentieth century. Samuel Kernell’s Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (2d ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1993) discusses the relationship between the presidency and the press. Robert E. Denton, Jr., and Dan F. Hahn provide an overview of presidential communications in Presidential Communication: Description and Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1986). Informative articles include Coates Lear’s and James Bennet’s “The Flack Pack—How Press Conferences Turn Serious Journalists into Shills,” The Washington Monthly (November, 1991), and Catherine Ann Collins’ “Kissinger’s Press Conferences, 1972-1974: An Explanation of Form and Role Relationship on News Management,” Central States Speech Journal 28 (Fall, 1977).