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Following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush’s bullhorn speech from the rubble of Ground Zero in New York similarly became a rally.
Bush spoke to the workers and first responders and encouraged them, but his short speech became a viral clip demonstrating the resilience of New Yorkers and the anger of a nation.
Ian Christopher McCaleb, “Bush tours ground zero in lower Manhattan,”
CNN , 14 September 2001. He told New Yorkers, the country, and the world that Americans could hear the frustration and anguish of New York, and that the terrorists would soon hear the United States (
[link] ).
Following their speeches, both presidents also received a bump in popularity. Clinton’s approval rating rose from 46 to 51 percent, and Bush’s from 51 to 90 percent.
“Presidential Job Approval Center,” http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx (August 28, 2015).
The invention of cable in the 1980s and the expansion of the Internet in the 2000s opened up more options for media consumers than ever before. Viewers can watch nearly anything at the click of a button, bypass commercials, and record programs of interest. The resulting saturation, or inundation of information, may lead viewers to abandon the news entirely or become more suspicious and fatigued about politics.
Alison Dagnes. 2010.
Politics on Demand: The Effects of 24-hour News on American Politics . Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. This effect, in turn, also changes the president’s ability to reach out to citizens. For example, viewership of the president’s annual State of the Union address has decreased over the years, from sixty-seven million viewers in 1993 to thirty-two million in 2015.
“Number of Viewers of the State of the Union Addresses from 1993 to 2015 (in millions),” http://www.statista.com/statistics/252425/state-of-the-union-address-viewer-numbers (August 28, 2015). Citizens who want to watch reality television and movies can easily avoid the news, leaving presidents with no sure way to communicate with the public.
Baum and Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?” Other voices, such as those of talk show hosts and political pundits, now fill the gap.
Electoral candidates have also lost some media ground. In
horse-race coverage , modern journalists analyze campaigns and blunders or the overall race, rather than interviewing the candidates or discussing their issue positions. Some argue that this shallow coverage is a result of candidates’ trying to control the journalists by limiting interviews and quotes. In an effort to regain control of the story, journalists begin analyzing campaigns without input from the candidates.
Shanto Iyengar. 2011. “The Media Game: New Moves, Old Strategies,”
The Forum: Press Politics and Political Science 9, No. 1, http://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2011/iyengar-mediagame.pdf. The use of social media by candidates provides a countervailing trend. President Trump’s hundreds of election tweets are the stuff of legend. These tweets kept his press coverage up, although they also were problematic for him at times. The final days of the contest saw no new tweets from Trump as he attempted to stay on message.
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