Presidential Leadership of Television and Newspaper Coverage Through Press Conferences

Does presidential leadership of the news through press conferences extend to both television and newspaper coverage? Presidents speak directly to reporters during their press conferences, and it is likely that both newspapers and television news cover them. Despite important differences between television and newspaper coverage of politics, however, we do not know whether newspapers and television cover the president\u27s press conferences, how this coverage differs, and what these differences mean for presidential leadership of the news. Theoretically, journalistic professionalism and the profit incentive of news media predict that newspapers and television will cover press conferences, particularly those held in Washington, DC Using plagiarism detection software to create similarity scores between the text of the president\u27s press conference and subsequent news coverage, I find that although both media cover press conferences, newspapers devote much more coverage to primetime conferences, a finding that has important implications for the president\u27s leadership of the news media