Optics Are the Real Power Of The Press

Michael Hedges March 31, 2021 - Follow on Twitter

Very important people interact with news media in many ways. Celebrities have different ways. Intended outcomes are similar. Means are different. Media management is no longer a fluffy career-shunting job in the public relations department. Stakeholders and lawyers demand expert media as failure is not an option.

National leaders who arrive in their positions through elections generally embrace the news media as one might coiled snakes. Dictators are far less reticent. Interacting with news reporters is a necessary component of election campaigns. Experienced politicians know this. Those coming to that endeavor with alternative experience - say, a game show host - have a lesser skill set. Political advisors know this.

Last week (March 25) US President Joe Biden held his first formal press conference with national news media. Throughout the first two months of his presidency, he regularly interacted with national and local reporters but had not taken to the traditional White House podium. His press secretary Jan Psaki holds near-daily press briefings.

Conventional wisdom holds that these events have become less about informing the public and more about satisfying specific news-hole needs. The press conference was carried live by all major US TV networks, streamed live by many online portals and reported broadly by every news outlet. Political concerns, however, are more about message management and optics and less about possible “gotcha” questions, for which these is always a planned response.

“His news conference was not marked by open hostility in the same way President Donald Trump's were,” noted CNN’s Kevin Liptak (March 25). “Biden sarcastically mourned Trump's absence.” Ten national reporters were called upon out of 25 in the room. “The Biden who showed up in the White House East Room for his first formal news conference was exactly the one Americans have come to expect,” said NBC national politics reporter Jonathan Allen.

Ahead of the event right-wing US media, clutching their usual conspiracy theory pearls, had expressed outrage that it had not been held sooner. Afterward they complained about the event being held on a Thursday - traditionally a big TV night - and that more had not been scheduled. When President Biden made no stumbles they complained that he had been “too prepared” and “used notes.” From there, the News Corp subsidiary Fox News howled to the nearly-full moon that their reporter had not been called upon. After about a day, the news cycle moved on.

Press conferences with leaders have become media fixtures elsewhere, though the art was created in the US when the first televised news conference was held in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has regularly put himself before reporters and TV cameras during his term and his spokespeople take questions off-camera daily. This is about the change, at least the optics.

There is now a new briefing room, which looks vaguely familiar. On Monday (March 29) PM Johnson address assembled reporters from a remodelled press room, months in process, once a courtroom. Some criticized the cost - GB£2.6 million, just over €3 million. Then, with all things revealed, the new press room was referred to as “White House-style,” flags, oak podiums and Thatcher-blue walls.

It is truly made for TV, as seen by the Conservative Party. The rest kept up the complaints. “The one thing a briefing room needs is a good story to tell, and good answers to hard questions,” wrote the Evening Standard (March 30). “No amount of money or makeovers can provide that.”

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