Media Lie Crushed: Trump Gives Nearly 50% More Access to Reporters Than Obama: New Study
It seems like a thousand news cycles ago, but remember Time’s “Person of the Year” in 2018? It was “The Guardians” — the reporters who put themselves in harm’s way to report on the “war on truth.” While most of the honorees were in fact people facing serious consequences for reporting on repressive regimes, the subtext was clear: Donald Trump was engaged in a war on the media.
“Such independence is no small thing. It marks the distinction between tyranny and democracy,” Time wrote when announcing the award.
“And in a world where budding authoritarians have advanced by blurring the difference, there was a clarity in the spectacle of a tyrant’s fury visited upon a man armed only with a pen. Because the strongmen of the world only look strong. All despots live in fear of their people. To see genuine strength, look to the spaces where individuals dare to describe what’s going on in front of them.”
Well, people could (and frequently did) note that the media had been given absolute carte blanche to abuse the president for almost two years when the award was given. The biggest consequence anyone’s faced is that Jim Acosta lost his press pass for a few days due to a physical incident with a White House intern. That’s not exactly the sign of a repressive regime.
Less reported is the fact that tyrants also don’t usually give access to reporters that frequently. And, if Trump is a tyrant when it comes to the press, consider the fact he interacted with them almost 50 percent more than Barack Obama did.
Research by Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, says that Trump has given a surprising amount of access to reporters.
“At his second year into his presidency, President Trump has given 200 interviews, 340 short question and answers sessions, 40 news conferences for a grand total of 580 interactions with the press. President Bill Clinton gave the most opportunities with 610,” Sinclair Broadcast Group reported.
“When you look at all the public utterances (Trump) has: his speeches, remarks, his interviews, his press conferences and his short Q-and-A, you find over half are instances when he is taking questions from reporters,” Kumar said.
In terms of question-and-answer sessions, Trump had 340 compared to Obama’s 75.
“I think what that means is that (Trump) doesn’t like giving policy speeches, he doesn’t like to go into depth on anything, and therefore he takes questions from reporters,” Kumar said. “Where somebody like Obama had very few questions-and-answer sessions, because he like to dig deep into policy.”
However, she did take Trump to task for the lack of White House press conferences.
“It is too bad. The briefings were a regular opportunity for reporters to pose questions that they think are important and the public thinks are important. Not just about the president, but about the administration,” Kumar said.
Other findings from the White House Transition Project were similar.
“Adding together the numbers of press conferences, short question and answer sessions, and interviews, there are similarities among the presidents during their first 18 months in office. With the exception of President Clinton who had more press interchanges than any modern President (506), the three most recent presidents have similar numbers for their sessions where they took questions,” their report found.
“The numbers are: Trump 372; Obama 308; George W. Bush 318. Their differences lie in the type and balance of forums they favor. President Trump, for example, favors short question and answer sessions while President Obama chose interviews as his preferred forum.”
Of course, interviews could be seen as a more controlled format, whereas question-and-answer sessions are quite a bit more difficult to control.
Moody also noted his use of Twitter as a method of interacting with Americans as opposed to scripted speeches.
“Except for President Trump, recent presidents are almost indistinguishable in the total numbers of occasions where they spoke publicly. These numbers include events and occasions where they did and did not answer reporters’ queries,” the study noted.
“The totals for Presidents Obama, George W. Bush, and Clinton were similar through their first 547 days. Obama: 1,007; George W. Bush 982; Clinton 1,111. With 825, President Trump had substantially fewer public speaking events than his three recent predecessors, but he found Twitter to be a useful alternative to set speeches. By the time he became President, Twitter had a broad reach, which it did not have during earlier presidencies.”
These are not the kind of numbers that a tyrant would generate. Trump may not venerate the media the way other presidents did, but plenty of Americans would argue the media has reached a state where veneration isn’t called for. We’ve gotten to the point where Ana Navarro is reduced to filing her nails on air as a “rebuttal” when someone presents facts she doesn’t agree with on one of those interminable CNN panel shoutfests. These are our “guardians?”
Believe what you want to believe, but the numbers don’t lie. There’s plenty of press access in the White House, despite what the media might want you to believe. Anyone who wants to respond to the president can do so on Twitter any hour of the day or night. If “The Guardians” want to press him, it seems like they have more than enough opportunities.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
