Obama’s Media Strategy
29 March 2009 |permalink | email article
The president, as his agenda faces increased notice from capital insiders, is employing media strategies never before put in play by an American president. FDR’s Oval Office press chats pale by comparison.
Take Obama’s prime-time news conference last week when he bypassed the New York Times. Washington Post and other traditional major dailies to favor questions from the TV networks, Univision, Politico, the Washington Times, and Stars and Stripes.
Pulitzer Prize winning former WashPo reporter Haynes Johnson saw a snub, grousing it was the first time in history a president declined to call on any representative of a major daily.
But editors at the Times and Post weren’t offended. Dean Baquet, a former Los Angeles Times editor and a rising star as NYT Washington bureau chief, noted at a time when so many news organizations are cutting their bureaus it was good to see people called upon who never get to ask a question.
In relying on new platforms such as YouTube and tense social networking tools Obama is adroitly doubling up on his distinct communications advantage.
Politico’s Mike Allen observed, “He is showing that the Sunday shows, which once looked like the old gray mare of Washington journalism, still have plenty of kick.”
This weekend’s shows, on the eve of a likely anti-American G20 summit meeting in Europe, and after announcing a new strategy in Afghanistan and an urgency to sell his budget and economic plans, effectively demonstrate how he’s placed his team on the tube.
The lineup, besides his taped appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” include Tim Geithner on both “Meet the Press and “This Week,” Robert Gates on “Fox News Sunday” and Gen. David Petraeus and Richard Holbrooke doing CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Fox’s Chris Wallace understandably remains miffed about administration control over guests, noting that his is the only show Obama has stiffed since the Democratic convention.
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