FDR and the News Media

FDR and the News Media PDF Author: Betty Houchin Winfield
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252016721
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Power was at the heart of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's relationship with the media: the power of the nation's chief executive to control his public messages versus the power of a free press to act as an independent watchdog over the president and the government. Here is a compelling study of Roosevelt's consummate news management skills as a key to FDR's political artistry and leadership legacy. [The author] explores FDR's adroit handling of the media within the classic conflict between confidentiality and openness in a democratic society. She explains how Roosevelt's manipulation of the press and public opinion changed as his administration's focus shifted from economic to military crises. During the depression FDR's leadership mode was flexible and open, seeking new answers for problems that had not responded to conventional solutions. Coreespondingly, his dealings with the media were frank and freewheeling. During the perilous years of World War II, when invasion was a legitimate fear and information could be used as a weapon, FDR was forced to be more secretive and less candid. Powerful publishers might have despised FDR, but Winfield shows how he bypassed them. Roosevelt elevated his personal relations with the working press to an unrivaled level of goodwill. He also held a record number of press conferences, nearly two per week during his twelve years in the White House. His famed fireside chats were carefully rationed for maximum impact. His press secretary, Steve Early, proved expert in promoting good press rapport. Winfield includes anecdotes and assessments culled from FDR's personal communications with journalists of the period from diaries and accounts of those who worked closely with FDR. She also gleans insights from the 1933-45 press conference and radio transcripts, journalists' responses, news articles, memoirs, letters to the White House, and the era's newspapers"--Jacket.

FDR and the News Media

FDR and the News Media PDF Author: Betty Houchin Winfield
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252016721
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Power was at the heart of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's relationship with the media: the power of the nation's chief executive to control his public messages versus the power of a free press to act as an independent watchdog over the president and the government. Here is a compelling study of Roosevelt's consummate news management skills as a key to FDR's political artistry and leadership legacy. [The author] explores FDR's adroit handling of the media within the classic conflict between confidentiality and openness in a democratic society. She explains how Roosevelt's manipulation of the press and public opinion changed as his administration's focus shifted from economic to military crises. During the depression FDR's leadership mode was flexible and open, seeking new answers for problems that had not responded to conventional solutions. Coreespondingly, his dealings with the media were frank and freewheeling. During the perilous years of World War II, when invasion was a legitimate fear and information could be used as a weapon, FDR was forced to be more secretive and less candid. Powerful publishers might have despised FDR, but Winfield shows how he bypassed them. Roosevelt elevated his personal relations with the working press to an unrivaled level of goodwill. He also held a record number of press conferences, nearly two per week during his twelve years in the White House. His famed fireside chats were carefully rationed for maximum impact. His press secretary, Steve Early, proved expert in promoting good press rapport. Winfield includes anecdotes and assessments culled from FDR's personal communications with journalists of the period from diaries and accounts of those who worked closely with FDR. She also gleans insights from the 1933-45 press conference and radio transcripts, journalists' responses, news articles, memoirs, letters to the White House, and the era's newspapers"--Jacket.

The Presidents vs. the Press

The Presidents vs. the Press PDF Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524745286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 593

Get Book Here

Book Description
An award-winning presidential historian offers an authoritative account of American presidents' attacks on our freedom of the press—including a new foreword chronicling the end of the Trump presidency. “The FAKE NEWS media,” Donald Trump has tweeted, “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Has our free press ever faced as great a threat? Perhaps not—but the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself. Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to actively manage the stable of reporters who followed him, doling out information, steering coverage, and squashing stories that interfered with his agenda. It was a strategy that galvanized TR’s public support, but the lesson was lost on Woodrow Wilson, who never accepted reporters into his inner circle. Franklin Roosevelt transformed media relations forever, holding more than a thousand presidential press conferences and harnessing the new power of radio, at times bypassing the press altogether. John F. Kennedy excelled on television and charmed reporters to hide his personal life, while Richard Nixon was the first to cast the press as a public enemy. From the days of newsprint and pamphlets to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, each president has harnessed the media, whether intentional or not, to imprint his own character on the office. In this remarkable new history, acclaimed scholar Harold Holzer examines the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it. From Washington to Trump, he chronicles the disputes and distrust between these core institutions that define the United States of America, revealing that the essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.

The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt PDF Author: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" (Radio Addresses to the American People Broadcast Between 1933 and 1944) by Franklin D. Roosevelt. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Harry S. Truman and the News Media

Harry S. Truman and the News Media PDF Author: Franklin D. Mitchell
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826211804
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based upon extensive research in the papers of President Harry S. Truman and in several journalistic collections, Harry S. Truman and the News Media recounts the story of a once unpopular chief executive who overcame the censure of the news media to ultimately win both the public's and the press's affirmation of his personal and presidential greatness. Franklin D. Mitchell traces the major contours of journalism during the lifetime and presidency of Truman. Although newspapers and newsmagazines are given the most emphasis, reporters and columnists of the Washington news corps also figure prominently for their role in the president's news conferences and their continuing coverage of Truman and his family. Broadcast journalism's expanding coverage of the president is also explored through chapters dealing with radio and television. President Truman's advocacy of a liberal Fair Deal for all Americans and a prudent and visible role for the nation in world affairs drew fire from the anti-administration news media, particularly the publishing empire of William Randolph Hearst, the McCormick-Patterson newspapers, the Scripps-Howard chain, and the Time-Life newsmagazines of Henry R. Luce. Despite press opposition and the almost universal prediction of defeat in the 1948 election, Truman was victorious in the greatest miscalled presidential election in journalistic history. During his full term, Truman's relations with the news media became contentious over such matters as national security in the Cold War, the conduct of the Korean War, and the continuing charges of communism and corruption in the administration. Although Truman's career in politics was based on honesty and the welfare of the people, his early political alliance with Thomas Pendergast, Kansas City's notorious political boss, provided the opportunity for a portion of the press to charge Truman with subservience to Pendergast's own agenda of corrupt government. The history and the dynamics of the Truman presidency and the American news media, combined with biographical and institutional sketches of key individuals and news organizations, make Harry S. Truman and the News Media a captivating and original investigation of an American president. Well written and researched, this book will be of great value to Truman scholars, journalists, and anyone interested in American history or presidential studies.

The Powers That Be

The Powers That Be PDF Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453286098
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1428

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize winner’s in-depth look at four media-business giants: CBS-TV, Time magazine, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. In this fascinating New York Times bestseller, the author of The Best and the Brightest, The Fifties, and other acclaimed histories turns his investigative eye to the rise of the American media in the twentieth century. Focusing on the successes and failures of CBS Television, Time magazine, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, David Halberstam paints a portrait of the era when large, powerful mainstream media sources emerged as a force, showing how they shifted from simply reporting the news to becoming a part of it. By examining landmark events such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s masterful use of the radio and the unprecedented coverage of the Watergate break-in, Halberstam demonstrates how print and broadcast media as a whole became a player in society and helped shape public policy. Drawn from hundreds of exhaustive interviews with insiders at each company, and hailed by the Seattle Times as “a monumental X-ray study of power,” The Powers That Be reveals the tugs-of-war between political ambition and the quest for truth in a page-turning read. This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.

Lincoln and the Power of the Press

Lincoln and the Power of the Press PDF Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439192715
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 768

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the press, arguing that he used such intimidation and manipulation techniques as closing down dissenting newspapers, pampering favoring newspaper men, and physically moving official telegraph lines.

Young Mr. Roosevelt

Young Mr. Roosevelt PDF Author: Stanley Weintraub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Young Mr. Roosevelt Stanley Weintraub evokes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's political and wartime beginnings. An unpromising patrician playboy appointed assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913, Roosevelt learned quickly and rose to national visibility in World War I. Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1920, he lost the election but not his ambitions. While his stature was rising, his testy marriage to his cousin Eleanor was fraying amid scandal quietly covered up. Ever indomitable, even polio a year later would not suppress his inevitable ascent. Against the backdrop of a reluctant America's entry into a world war and FDR's hawkish build-up of a modern navy, Washington's gossip-ridden society, and the nation's surging economy, Weintraub summons up the early influences on the young and enterprising nephew of his predecessor, “Uncle Ted.”

Press Critics Are the Fifth Estate

Press Critics Are the Fifth Estate PDF Author: Arthur S. Hayes
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
Robust, uninhibited, provocative, and even scurrilous criticism of corporate media by the Fifth Estate—composed of private citizens and watchdog and partisan groups of all stripes—is vital to the functioning of the American democratic process. Hayes reviews the historical development of press criticism since the 1880s in each of ten categories: muckrakers, journalism reviews, columnists and authors, television press critics, press councils, advocacy groups, scholars, ombudsmen, bloggers, and satirists. The author provides nine case studies of recent press criticism campaigns that have, though widely vilified as uncivil or marginalized as kooky, contributed significantly to checking the pretensions of corporate media to an unwholesome monopoly on journalistic truth.

FDR in American Memory

FDR in American Memory PDF Author: Sara Polak
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book Here

Book Description
How was FDR's image constructed—by himself and others—as such a powerful icon in American memory? In polls of historians and political scientists, Franklin Delano Roosevelt consistently ranks among the top three American presidents. Roosevelt enjoyed an enormous political and cultural reach, one that stretched past his presidency and across the world. A grand narrative of Roosevelt's crucial role in the twentieth century persists: the notion that American ideology, embodied by FDR, overcame the Depression and won World War II, while fascism, communism, and imperialism—and their ignoble figureheads—fought one another to death in Europe. This grand narrative is flawed and problematic, legitimizing the United States's cultural, diplomatic, and military role in the world order, but it has meant that FDR continues to loom large in American culture. In FDR in American Memory, Sara Polak analyzes Roosevelt's construction as a cultural icon in American memory from two perspectives. First, she examines him as a historical leader, one who carefully and intentionally built his public image. Focusing on FDR's use of media and his negotiation of the world as a disabled person, she shows how he consistently aligned himself with modernity and future-proof narratives and modes of rhetoric. Second, Polak looks at portrayals and negotiations of the FDR icon in cultural memory from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century. Drawing on recent and well-known cultural artifacts—including novels, movies, documentaries, popular biographies, museums, and memorials—she demonstrates how FDR positioned himself as a rhetorically modern and powerful but ideologically almost empty container. That deliberate positioning, Polak writes, continues to allow almost any narrative to adopt him as a relevant historical example even now. As a study of presidential image-fashioning, FDR in American Memory will be of immediate relevance to present-day readers.

The Last 100 Days

The Last 100 Days PDF Author: David B. Woolner
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096514
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
A revealing portrait of the end of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life and presidency, shedding new light on how he made his momentous final policy decisions The first hundred days of FDR's presidency are justly famous, often viewed as a period of political action without equal in American history. Yet as historian David B. Woolner reveals, the last hundred might very well surpass them in drama and consequence. Drawing on new evidence, Woolner shows how FDR called on every ounce of his diminishing energy to pursue what mattered most to him: the establishment of the United Nations, the reinvigoration of the New Deal, and the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. We see a president shorn of the usual distractions of office, a man whose sense of personal responsibility for the American people bore heavily upon him. As Woolner argues, even in declining health FDR displayed remarkable political talent and foresight as he focused his energies on shaping the peace to come.