Conversation posts Socolow piece about presidents’ live prime-time broadcasts
The Conversation published media historian Michael Socolow’s column about U.S. presidents’ use of broadcasting to calm the nation in times of duress. The associate professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism wrote that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first “fireside chat” 87 years ago from the White House reached an estimated 60 million listeners and proved broadcasting’s power “as nothing before or since.” Roosevelt’s address provided “the model future presidents would use to inform the American citizenry, calm national anxieties and establish the crucial importance of a moment in time,” wrote Socolow. While today’s live, prime-time national addresses from the White House represent a unique opportunity for a president, if they’re mishandled or improperly employed, Socolow says they can backfire. President Trump’s live TV address about the coronavirus was not successful, wrote Socolow, because it failed to fulfill the most important goals of a prime-time broadcast: to inform the American citizenry, calm national anxieties and establish the crucial importance of a moment in time. For example, when the president’s address was over, Socolow wrote that the president’s aides needed to quickly clarify what he had said “because it failed to align with the reality of the policies his administration planned to take. And, Socolow wrote, “the following morning, stock trading was halted 38 minutes into the daily session when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 7%, demonstrating that the financial markets he sought to calm remained troubled by his leadership.”