As the presidential race heats up, 52% of Americans say they’re following the candidates fairly closely or very close. But which news outlets do they turn to for their political news? A new study by the Pew Research Center takes a closer look at how people consume news about the 2020 presidential contenders.
Since the WHCA was founded on February 25, 1914, the world of presidential news has been shaped in the White House press room. That’s where reporters file “pool reports” that get distributed to the entire White House press corps and a broader list controlled by the WHCA. The pool’s written accounts, photos and footage are the daily record of what happens in the administration. They become permanent fodder for journalists, authors and historians.
For nearly a century, journalists have been accompanying presidents on their personal travels in order to cover the president’s activities for a wider audience of Americans. Pool reporters accompanied Franklin Roosevelt on his train ride down to Warm Springs, Georgia for treatment for paralysis and were there when the president died at the end of World War II.
In the years that followed, presidents searched for ways to respond to reporters’ questions while keeping their private lives and foreign policy matters out of the spotlight. They trimmed down their on-the-record press conferences. But in the 1960s, when most Americans had a television set, they could tune in to President Kennedy’s daytime and early evening press conferences that brought the president into living rooms and offices across America.