THE PRESIDENTS VS. THE PRESS

Conflict between presidents and the press has erupted throughout America's history.

National Humanities Medal winner Holzer, a noted authority on Lincoln and the Civil War and director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, offers a lively, impressively well-grounded view of the relationships of 19 presidents with the journalists who covered them. As the author portrays them, presidents often felt threatened by the press but could not resist following the news. More or less, they sought to manipulate their own narratives; when they failed, they lashed out in anger. Caught “in the crosshairs of the press,” Washington did not stoop to respond while Jefferson, “buffeted by violent newspaper criticism throughout his presidency,” raged in “anti-press fury.” Manipulating the press during war obsessed some presidents: Lincoln became a harsh censor of news in order to control coverage of Civil War casualties. Similarly, when America entered war in 1917, Wilson “entirely shut himself off from the press corps, limiting its access to news of the war’s horrors, stifling criticism of American participation,” and “flooding the press and public with government propaganda.” Some naturally gregarious presidents treated journalists like friends. Teddy Roosevelt, for example, won reporters’ admiration “through the sheer force of his ebullient personality and his unrestrainable eagerness to share news, gossip, and sometimes even secrets.” Franklin Roosevelt invited reporters to garden parties. Holzer notes a profound change in reporters’ attitudes toward outing personal information—e.g., an “unwritten rule” prevented them from mentioning FDR’s disability. But after Nixon’s scandals, reporters became convinced “that only relentless press oversight could keep leaders honest and the republic safe.” Holzer astutely examines how several presidents made use of new technologies to disseminate their messages: FDR on radio, JFK on television, Obama on social media—and, of course, Trump on Twitter. Trump’s successor, Holzer asserts, will face a press emboldened to reassert its power.

A shrewd history of the fight to convey and repress objective truth.