Front page from the White House: A quantitative study of personal news coverage from Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan

Historians, political scientists, journalists, politicians, and presidents have criticized today's press for placing too much emphasis on personal news about the president. Critics say presidential news coverage increasingly centers on the man's personality and personal trivia. This quantitiative study challenges the criticism by exploring personal news coverage of the twentieth century's fifteen presidents. The study was designed to determine if personal news about recent presidents has accounted for a larger portion of presidential news coverage. Secondary purposes were to determine which presidents have received the most and the least personal coverage and to identify factors that have influenced the amount of personal news coverage presidents receive. Data were collected from a two-year sample period of each man's presidency. The four major newspapers studied--New York Times, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Atlanta Constitution--give the study a national perspective while representing different political leanings. Results show that, contrary to general impressions, early twentieth-century presidents received a higher percentage of personal news than have recent presidents. Data show personal stories represented the following percentages of news coverage: T. Roosevelt, 51; Wilson, 24; Harding, 22; F. Roosevelt, 16; Coolidge, 15: Kennedy, 14; Truman and Johnson, 12; Reagan and Taft, 11; Carter, 10; Ford, 9; Hoover, 8; Eisenhower, 7; and Nixon, 5. Regression analysis procedures used the aggregate data for all the presidents to define a trend toward less personal coverage of presidents. The regression coefficient was found to be $-$.26. Factors identified as influencing the magnitude of a president's personal news coverage are: how early in the century he serves, how newsworthy his personality and personal life are, and how willing he is to provide the press with liberal access to the White House and to him. The study concludes that newspapers are wrongly perceived as being preoccupied with personal coverage from the White House because television news constantly airs footage depicting trivial activities of the president. Another conclusion is that today's major newspapers are created, with regard to personal coverage from the White House, with a higher degree of professionalism than those of the past; they place very few personal stories about the president on their front page. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).