Toward a Fuller Understanding of the Echoing Press: Presidential Addresses and the New York Times, 1933-2013

TLDR: For example, this article analyzed news coverage of major presidential addresses in the New York Times from 1933 to 2013 and found that echoing has an inverse relationship with the inclusion of perspectives that run counter to the president's views.

Abstract: This study seeks to extend and clarify Domke’s (2004) theory of the “echoing press.” Developing a conceptual argument about the interrelationships among several key theories of the U.S. president–press relationship, we analyze news coverage of major presidential addresses in the New York Times from 1933 to 2013. Our analysis clarifies the consistent but modest echoing effect that has occurred over the past 8 decades, and broadens the theory to encompass not only wartime communications but all foreign policy contexts. We also rule out several alternative explanations for the echoing effect, and show that echoing has an inverse relationship with the inclusion of perspectives that run counter to the president’s views. Among the many important relationships that scholars of communication have sought to understand is the relationship between the U.S. president and the American news media.This only makes sense:The president is among the most significant political figures in the world and the news media are the president’s primary vehicle for public communication. Consequently, what the president says and how that message circulates throughout news media are issues worthy of scholarly exploration. Not surprisingly, a substantial body of research has grown from such exploration. Much of this scholarship has coalesced around a few key theories, most notably agenda setting/building (e.g., McCombs, 2004; McCombs & Shaw, 1993; Wanta, Stephenson, Turk, & McCombs, 1989), indexing (e.g., Althaus, Edy, Entman, & Phalen, 1996; Bennett, 1990; Bennett, Lawrence, & Livingston, 2007), and framing (e.g., Entman, 1993; Rowling, Jones, & Sheets, 2011)—the last of which has been most fully specified in the politics–press context via Entman’s (2004) “cascading activation” model. Each of these theories, in its own way, provides needed insight into if and how the president and other political elites are able to meet one of their central goals: getting their chosen perspectives disseminated via the press.