V.                  Government and the News

1.       Gov’t agencies all try to shape public opinion, and they have to, because if they don’t sooner or later, they’ll find themselves weak, without allies and in trouble.

2.       Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to use the press to his advantage, giving inside stories to his friends in the press, keeping them away from those he didn’t like, and including a reporters’ room in the West Wing of the White House.

                                                               i.      Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his press secretary a major instrument for cultivating and managing, as well as informing, the press.

3.       The White House press corps is a group of men and women who are closest to the president, always there whenever anything newsworthy occurs.

4.       Congress has watched with jealousy at all the attention lavished on the president but has been unsure how to act; it was only in 1974 that significant press coverage of Congress began.

                                                               i.      Since 1979, C-SPAN has provided coverage of House events, but the Senate has used TV much more fully, allowing many events to be broadcast for live TV or for videos, and as a result, many senators have used this TV coverage to propel themselves to the presidency.