frequency of presidential news conferences

[Phouchg]

GWB is in his prime-time news conference right now. I seem to remember growing up that there were a lot more of these in prime time preempting all my favorite shows. How come these once ubiquitous events are now only done once every 5 years or so…instead of several times a year?
Phouchg
Lovable Rogue

[The_Controvert]

George Bush quote: “I intend to keep doing these news conferences as long as I am president.”

Looks like you WILL be seeing them more frequently.

[kanicbird]

Difference in strategies. Ronald Reagan was not given the best press reviews so he would take his message to the people during prime time. George Bush didn’t say all that much. Bill Clinton started making speeches but most people though it boring (remember he was never an actor) and the news stopped covering him. G.W.B. due to the atrocity is able to restart this trend.

I’m not saying R.R. started it just not old enough to remember much before him.

I tried to be impartial in this post

[pesch]

To echo k2, it is a difference in strategies. Presidents are not bound by law or custom to hold press conferences. FDR, for example, would call in a few reporters and talk to them on what would be called now “deep background” (e.g., don’t quote me). It was informal, and it seemed like FDR got more from the reporters’ talk than the other way around.

That’s as far as I can go in this GQ thread without turning it into a GD or (God forbid) a BBQ. The point is that it’s Bush’s call when or how he holds a press conference.

[BobT]

I can picture George Washington saying to his Cabinet.

“So you want me to stand in front of a bunch of lowly reporters and answer their questions? Half of these guys think I’m trying to sell out the country to George III?”

It really wasn’t until FDR were there presidential press conferences in the sense that we know them. Some reporters would get interviews and sometimes the president would answer questions submitted to him in advance, but it wasn’t until the first electronic-media savvy president (FDR) came around did we see a president who would just answer whatever questions the reporters had.

Calvin Coolidge made his famous announcement of “I do not choose to run for president in 1928” by handing out slips of paper with that on it to what was the White House press corps at the time. It certainly wasn’t like “The West Wing.”

[RealityChuck]

Presidential press conferences were fairly common before television (at least, in the 20th century). Roosevelt used to have a few reporters in his office fairly regularly.

When TV came along, the presidents began to hold them live. Eisenhower did it a few times, but Kennedy made it a regular event. Johnson kept up the tradition, and so did Nixon, though once Watergate hit, they became less and less frequent

[evilhanz]

Some related info:

1. Wilson gave the first open presidential news conference in 1913.

2. Eisenhower permitted the first taping of a news conference for television broadcast in 1955.

3. Kennedy gave the first live news conference on radio and television on January 25, 1961.

4. Veteran White House correspondent, Helen Thomas began the tradition of ending news conferences with “Thank you, Mr. President” during the Kennedy administration.

Before a live news conference is scheduled, the White House negotiates with the major networks for airtime. They’re more reluctant duing sweeps, obviously. The networks are not required to provide the President with air time, although if there’s overwhelming news worthiness, they’re unlikely to decline the request. Fortunately, those requests are infrequent. Although my interest in politics didn’t dawn until the late 1980’s, I don’t seem to recall any difference in the frequency of news conferences, except during major events, mainly military actions.

[evilhanz]

Two other dates of note, although not “press conferences” like the one we saw this evening:

5. Coolidge gave the first radio address by a President in 1925.

6. Truman gave the first televised address on October 5, 1947.

[dqa]

From a 1981 report

Theodore Roosevelt first brought groups of reporters into the White House for interviews from time to time-often while he was being shaved in the morning. After a four-year lapse during the Taft administration, the press conference returned in 1913 to Woodrow Wilson’s White House, where it has since remained. Wilson introduced regular meetings with the press and equal access for all accredited reporters. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover continued these sessions, although they required that questions be submitted in writing to them in advance.

Ironically, the report is optimistic about president-elect Reagan’s commitment to have frequent news conferences; in fact he had the least frequent of any modern president. Last I heard, that is. Clinton may have dropped below as a result of the whole Monica thing.

Here’s a chart.

Presidential news conferences with White House correspondents, 1929-1996.
Average Number Per Month ~ President
5.6 Herbert Hoover
6.9 Franklin Roosevelt
3.6 Harold Truman
2.0 Dwight Eisenhower
1.9 John Kennedy
2.2 Lyndon Johnson
0.6 Richard Nixon
1.3 Gerald Ford
1.2 James Carter
0.6 Ronald Reagan
1.3 George Bush
0.7 William Clinton

[deltopia]

Something about what evilhanz posted earlier struck me as familiar, so I looked it up.

The networks are not required to provide the President with air time, although if there’s overwhelming news worthiness, they’re unlikely to decline the request. Fortunately, those requests are infrequent.

In the Tom Clancy novel Executive Orders, published 1996, in chapter 50, it says:

…Only thirty minutes earlier the White House had told the major networks that the President had an announcement to make, and that on this occasion, the government would exercise its option to demand airtime instead of requesting it – since the 1920s, the government had adopted the position that it owned the airwaves – thus supplanting all the talk shows and other programming which preceded the evening news.

Tom Clancy has a reputation of researching his stuff out the wazoo, of course, so this holds a degree of credibility to me. Any legal beagles out there want to figure this one out?

Side note- I found a quote on page 680 of a book I haven’t read for at least four years to quibble with a detail that really didn’t have that much to do with the OP in the first place. Conclusion- I have too much time on my hands.