As the election approaches, 58% of Americans say they are following news about the presidential candidates very or fairly closely. But most also see misinformation – deliberately misleading news stories – as a major source of confusion about the campaign.
Among the first things President Kennedy did upon his arrival in Washington was hold press conferences. The sessions were broadcast live on television and brought the President into living rooms across the country. They were a part of a new kind of political communication where reporters could ask questions and get direct answers from the President.
In the decades that followed, presidents experimented with ways to interact with journalists in settings that suited their own personal and diplomatic needs. Joint conferences, for example, emerged in which the President appeared with a foreign head of state and were generally held when such leaders visited the US.
The tables below provide a snapshot of the many different ways in which presidents have met with reporters to discuss policy and politics since Eisenhower. We have counted each occurrence as a separate event because the context in which the interaction occurs makes it unique. For example, a solo conference counts as one on the record interview but is not tallied separately from a prime-time event.
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