4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2017
⏱️ 50 minutes
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A history of how the White House and the press corps learned how to live with each other. In 1897, when President McKinley was sworn in, there was no working relationship between the office of the US President and the members of the press. McKinley became the first president to allow press briefings, let the reporters into the Oval office and harness the power of the newspapers to affect public opinion. President Woodrow Wilson treated the press like schoolboys and chatted to them while having his morning shave, but his presidency did establish the principle that journalists could routinely question their country’s leader. The first televised press conference was with JFK in 1961 and now they are a key part of any US president's relationship with the people who voted for him, with President Obama widening the meaning of the “press” to include Reddit, Google Hangouts and evening chat shows. As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move into The White House, we consider how the presidential relationship with the press will change, given his avowed contempt for aspects of the “Fourth Estate”. Our Washington correspondent Jon Sopel - no stranger to a presidential press conference - looks at the history of the connection between the US president and the press over more than 100 years and speculates on how it is set to change.
(Photo: Donald Trump greets reporters after a debate sponsored by Fox News in Detroit, 2016 . Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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0:00.0 | Good afternoon everybody. |
0:03.0 | Then I'll answer it once. |
0:06.0 | Good afternoon. |
0:08.0 | Hello, I'm John Sopel, the BBC's North America editor based in Washington. |
0:12.0 | I guess the three buildings I know best in |
0:14.9 | the city at my home, our office and the White House briefing room. |
0:19.3 | You don't have to get all exercise about this but what you can do. |
0:23.0 | If we ask you a question you should answer the question. |
0:27.0 | I did. |
0:28.0 | This is the way the White House communicates with the world on a daily basis. |
0:31.0 | It's the lunchtime briefing. The President's |
0:34.4 | press secretary at the podium asks in seven rows of movie theatre seats with |
0:38.7 | endless questions. The BBC sits in the back row in the cheap seats. |
0:44.0 | But has he privately endorsed anyone and has he... |
0:47.0 | No. |
0:48.0 | Well, it wouldn't be private if I said it here. |
0:50.0 | At one end of the White House is the East Wing where the President and First Lady live. |
0:55.1 | At the other end, the West Wing, which houses the Oval Office, the Situation Room, and where |
0:59.8 | the Cabinet meets. |
1:01.5 | But in the middle is our area, complete with a messy kitchen, |
1:05.2 | workspaces, and the briefing room. |
1:07.7 | In the White House Press Briefing Room, from the ABC News seat, I could stand up and take |
... |
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