REPORT: Media favor process over substance in Obama press briefings
Opposite findings with Bush Summary: A Media Matters study shows that the White House press corps asked significantly more process than substance questions about the Obama economic recovery bill. By contrast, while the disparity in substance and process questions was even greater in the context of the Bush administration's tax cut plan in 2001, it was in the opposite direction -- with reporters far more focused on substance than process.
A Media Matters for America analysis of White House press briefing questions about President Obama's economic recovery package found that a significant majority of them -- 62 percent -- focused on the politics and process surrounding the plan. By contrast, the study found that in 2001, more than two-thirds of White House press briefing questions about the tax-cut package promoted by the Bush administration focused on the substance of the plan. In addition, the study found that White House reporters were far more fixated on the success or failure of Obama's efforts to get bipartisan support for the economic recovery bill than they were concerned with the success or failure of President Bush's for his tax cut package, despite the fact that Bush ran on a promise to "change the tone in Washington" and "move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past."
The findings of Media Matters' study -- that the White House press corps focused on process over substance in 2009, and that reporters were far more concerned with Obama's efforts at bipartisanship than with Bush's -- are consistent with what Media Matters has previously documented in the media's coverage of Obama's recovery plan: that in addition to the prevalence of falsehoods and misinformation in coverage of the bill and of economic issues in general during the first 100 days of the Obama administration, that coverage was further marred by a lack of substance and expertise. Television outlets hosted remarkably few economists in their coverage of the economic recovery bill; comparably, the White House press corps demonstrated a greater interest in the process and politics of the recovery bill than in its substance.
According to the analysis, 62 percent of the questions about Obama's recovery package focused on the political and procedural aspects of the bill, while 38 percent were substance-oriented. Examples of daily briefing questions to the White House communications staff that focused on process and politics include:
* "A majority of the American people apparently support blocking or making major changes to the stimulus bill, according to a Gallup poll. Are you worried at all that you've lost control of the process on how this bill is perceived?" (2/5/09)
* "Are you saying we're misreading the President's remarks today when we -- if we say he sounded more combative and increasingly impatient with the speed at which the stimulus plan is going through Congress?" (2/5/09)
* "Is there an 'us versus them' dynamic being played out here rhetorically for the President?" (2/6/09)
* "In days past, when we asked you whether he was going to take this effort to sell the stimulus on the road, you told us there weren't any plans to do that. ... But it now appears he is going to be hitting the road. And is that a change in strategy because there's a sense that you're kind of behind where you wanted to be at this point?" (2/6/09)
By contrast, White House press briefing questions about the tax-cut package promoted by the Bush administration in 2001, which was signed into law in June of that year, largely focused on the substance and details of the plan. The study found that 68 percent of the press briefing questions to the Bush White House communications staff about the tax cuts were substance-oriented, while 32 percent were politics- and process-oriented questions.
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200904240002?f=h_top
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