The presidency offers many avenues for information to be provided to the Press. The main channels are solo news conferences and brief question and answer sessions – with some White House officials choosing to add in interviews both on and off the record, or deliberate “leaks” of information indirectly.
As America heads to the polls, we’re at a pivotal moment in our history. Our major parties are offering competing visions of our nation’s future. Rather than confusing voters by overplaying the harms of one candidate or the other, the mainstream press should focus on clarifying the choice they offer.
NPR’s politics and government reporter Andrew Schneider takes a look at some of the big political news this week:
* The president has weighed sending troops to Chicago and other Democrat-run cities to fight crime; weeks of talk have heightened tensions. * A Congressional Gold Medal has been awarded to the renowned Harlem Hellfighters. * The Bureau of Labor Statistics has rebuffed Trump’s attack on the integrity of its jobs numbers.
On CBS, Joe Biden’s horserace coverage was far more positive than that of Trump – 98 percent of the reports were positive and only one in fifty were negative (see figure 1). But it was a very different story on Fox, where the balance was three-to-two unfavorable for both candidates. Trump’s most favorable coverage came through issue reporting – policy stands, symbolic issues and statements on personal qualities – which were more than 40-percentile points more positive for him than for Biden.