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Who's listening: Newspaper coverage of the presidents'
  weekly radio addresses during times of crisis




A paper submitted April 1, 2005, to the Communication Theory & 
Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism 
and Mass Communication.


Abstract: This study examines coverage of the presidents' 1997-2004 
weekly radio addresses in The New York Times and Houston 
Chronicle.  Bush received significantly less coverage in the Times 
than Clinton; the Houston paper treated the presidents similarly. 
Foreign-policy speeches received less coverage than domestic speeches 
but were more likely to be on the front page. Of the seven crises 
studied, only the 1998 embassy bombings and Sept. 11, 2001, attacks 
resulted in more coverage of the radio addresses.




Beverly Horvit, Ph.D., and Dave Ferman
Texas Christian University
Schieffer School of Journalism
(817) 257-6545 (office)
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]

	
Who's listening: Newspaper coverage of the presidents' weekly radio 
addresses during times of crisis

7

In U.S. foreign policy, the president is presumed to be the 
pre-eminent player (Kegley and Wittkopf, 1996). He is the commander 
in chief of the armed forces. He has been given the authority to 
appoint ambassadors, negotiate treaties and generally represent the 
United States abroad. "Authority also derived from the ability of the 
president to act assertively and decisively in the crisis-ridden 
atmosphere of the post-World War II period" (Kegley and Wittkopf, p. 
341). In fact, crisis or no crisis, foreign affairs or domestic 
affairs, the president is considered to be the No. 1 newsmaker in the 
United States (Severin and Tankard, 1992, p. 216).
In terms of agenda-setting theory, then, the president should be in a 
privileged position to help set the media agenda. Particularly in the 
realm of foreign policy and even more so during a national crisis, 
one might expect what the president says to be judged newsworthy by 
the media and subsequently reported.  The question to be examined 
here is to what extent the president influences the media agenda with 
his weekly radio address, a routine event as opposed to more 
significant speeches, such as the annual State of the Union address. 
Furthermore, is the president's ability enhanced when he is 
discussing foreign policy or when the nation is involved in a military crisis?
The president's ability to set a foreign policy agenda and choose 
which issues and countries to focus on is limited by a variety of 
factors. These include events happening in other countries, 
``intractable'' issues and the importance placed on various issues by 
the media (Brenner, 1999, p. 172). Among the factors Brenner found in 
determining which issues have received attention from several 
presidents are familiarity with or interest in specific topics; 
monitoring some issues; the president's desire to find solutions to 
issues he's associated himself with; sudden major events; and trade 
all make it more likely that a president will address a particular 
conflict (Brenner, 1999, p. 187).
Although several studies have examined presidents' relations with the 
press during crises (see, for example, Winfield, 1992; Smolla, 1992; 
and Kern, Levering and Levering, 1983), few quantitative studies have 
focused directly on foreign policy and agenda setting. One exception 
was Wood and Peake (1998). They found that television attention to 
three enduring foreign-policy issues in the 1980s and 1990s affected 
how often the president addressed an issue in a speech, but not vice 
versa. Another study found that a president may influence television 
coverage of issues, such as international crises, if he is an 
important news source (Wanta and Foote, 1994). Other studies examined 
presidents' ability to set the media's agenda with their State of the 
Union addresses and came up with contradictory findings (Wanta et al, 
1989; Severin and Tankard, 1992). As defined by international 
relations scholars, a foreign-policy crisis is a situation that the 
nation's top decision-makers perceive to be a threat to the United 
States' basic values, that must be responded to within a finite time 
period and that has a high probability of involvement in military 
hostilities (Wilkenfeld, Brecher and Moser, 1988).
The relationship between the president's foreign-policy agenda and 
media attention to a situation or conflict involves a certain amount 
of give and take. For example, Mermin (1997) noted that American aid 
to Ethiopia in 1984 increased by millions of dollars following 
several stories on NBC that focused the nation's attention on the 
famine. However, Mermin's study also showed that, in 1992, the three 
major networks (NBC, CBS and ABC) only began covering the warfare and 
suffering in Somalia after politicians in Washington, D.C. focused 
their attention on the region. In this case, politicians giving 
significant attention to Somalia led to the networks following suit, 
not the other way around. Washington, not the networks, first framed 
Somalia as "a human rights disaster that the United States could do 
something about,'' Mermin wrote (1997).
Some presidents seemed to be responding to media coverage in their 
speeches, while others seemed to have more influence over subsequent 
coverage. Interestingly, one study found that the highest 
correlations were between media coverage before and after the speech, 
which "suggests a kind of stability or consistency of news coverage – 
probably due to news routines, news values used by journalists, and 
other factors in journalism itself" (Severin and Tankard, p. 217). 
This finding is similar to the concept of inertia studied by Wood and 
Peake (1998).
What few scholars have examined are recent presidents' weekly radio 
addresses. Beginning in April 1982, President Reagan spoke to the 
nation each week during a 5-minute radio broadcast. In 1993, a newly 
elected Democratic president, Bill Clinton, decided to follow in 
Reagan's footsteps. He continued to give the radio speeches almost 
every Saturday of his presidency, and his successor, George W. Bush, 
gives them, as well. For the presidents, the radio addresses are a 
means of presenting their agenda, "a set of issues that are 
communicated in a hierarchy of importance at a point in time" 
(Dearing and Rogers, 1996, p. x.), to the public. Reporters cannot 
interrupt with questions, and the president is free to discuss 
whatever he wishes. When Reagan began his weekly radio addresses, 
they were "seen as an effort by the President to reestablish a public 
presence and, at the same, to escape some of the press and television 
editing of his statements and interpretations of his acts. The 
controlled setting also eliminated the danger of uninformed 
commentary that had occasionally marked the President's news 
conferences" (Martin, 1984, p. 817).
How successful Reagan was in directly reaching the public is not 
known. Mutual, NBC and ABC carried Reagan's first talk, and NBC and 
ABC made the addresses available to affiliates, which were under no 
obligation to carry them (Martin, p. 817). However, if few Americans 
heard the broadcasts live, many more could learn about them – in a 
more filtered form -- from newspapers or on the nightly television 
news. The only scholar who appears to have studied Reagan's radio 
addresses is Howard H. Martin (1984), who found that NBC, CBS and The 
New York Times reported the addresses fairly regularly. Martin 
concluded that Reagan "frequently managed to set the agenda – for 
media reporters and for Democratic spokesmen charged with the job of 
respondent – and has been able to have his say in a setting he 
controls, thus minimizing the danger of errors, off-hand 
misstatements and faux pas" (p. 821). But Martin also noted that the 
president was "unable to escape the filtering process presided over 
by the media gatekeepers." A later study (Horvit, 2001) examined the 
1983 and 1993 radio addresses by Presidents Reagan and Clinton, as 
well as coverage in The New York Times, and found that Reagan was 
more successful than Clinton at attracting next-day news coverage.
  Besides the Horvit study, scholarly attention to Clinton's radio 
addresses seems to be nonexistent. Instead, research and other 
articles have focused on Clinton's use of radio call-in shows, talk 
shows and advertising as a campaign tool in 1992 (Bernstein, 1996; 
Diamond et al, 1993; Dobrez, 1996; McAvoy, 1993; Petrozello, 1994; 
and Owen, 1997). McAvoy noted how the White House was going directly 
to television and radio stations in the ill-fated effort to promote 
Clinton's health-care reform plan. "You all have the best grass-roots 
means of reaching the public," presidential adviser David Gergen told 
talk-show hosts. "We want you to feel you can call on this 
administration if you want people to come on your shows. I happen to 
be a big, big believer in radio" (McAvoy, p. 54). In 1993, The 
Chicago Tribune reported that Clinton's was the first administration 
to have a radio director in the White House's media affairs office 
(Kening, 1993). "Radio is important to us and is a very powerful 
medium that is too often given less attention than television and 
print," said Richard Strauss, the new radio director (Kening). 
Clinton began delivering his weekly radio addresses in February 1993. 
Because the first address, given from an otherwise empty Oval Office, 
was "kind of flat," aides soon turned it into an event, filling the 
office with White House staffers, federal workers and their families 
(Cerio and Howard, 1993).
As was the case with Reagan's addresses, how many people listened to 
Clinton each week is unknown. Major radio networks broadcast his 
first speech live, but several station executives said live coverage 
would continue only if the addresses were newsworthy. Although major 
networks, such as UPI, AP, CBS, ABC, Mutual, NBC, Unistar and CNN, 
said they would continue to air the speeches, the networks' 
affiliates are under no obligation to carry the addresses (Viles, 
1993). In 1996, WTOP-AM, the only Washington-area outlet to carry 
Clinton's speeches, stopped because the addresses did not fit the 
station's new format (Milk, 1996). However, according to the White 
House Radio Office, stations in 13 of the country's top 15 markets 
carried the address in 1998.[1] George W. Bush delivered his first 
radio address Jan. 27, 2001, and has continued them since. According 
to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, however, Bush's radio 
addresses are not typically heard by radio audiences (Cuprisin, 
2001). Instead, they can be heard on C-SPAN or via the Internet.
Regardless of how many people listen or do not listen, Viles says, 
"The Saturday speech … has been used more as an opportunity to set 
the agenda for weekend news coverage than to reach a live audience 
via radio." Can that assumption be supported? This study will examine 
how successfully Presidents Clinton and Bush used their weekly radio 
addresses to influence the media's agenda, specifically the agenda of 
The New York Times and the Houston Chronicle. The Times was chosen 
because it is an elite news newspaper known for its coverage of 
international affairs and its influence among the United States' 
foreign-policy elite (Cohen, 1963; O'Heffernan, 1991). The Chronicle 
was chosen because it has the largest daily circulation of any 
newspaper in Bush's home state of Texas. In addition to collecting 
descriptive statistics on the content of the radio addresses and the 
extent and prominence of news coverage, the following hypotheses and 
research questions will be tested or examined, as appropriate:
RQ1: How much will Presidents Bush and Clinton focus on foreign vs. 
domestic policy in their weekly radio addresses?

RQ2: How much next-day coverage will the radio addresses receive in 
The New York Times and The Houston Chronicle?

H1: Presidential addresses on foreign policy are more likely to 
generate news coverage than are addresses on domestic policy.

H2: Presidential addresses on foreign policy are more likely to 
generate more prominent news coverage than speeches on domestic policy.

H3: During international crises involving the United States, 
presidents will focus more on foreign policy than usual in their 
weekly radio addresses.

H4: Once an international crisis has begun, presidents will use their 
next weekly radio address to discuss foreign policy, and those radio 
addresses will receive more news coverage than do the usual weekly addresses.

H5:  During international crises involving the United States, the 
weekly presidential radio addresses will receive more coverage than 
otherwise and foreign policy addresses will receive more coverage 
than otherwise.


The data and methodology
The primary research method used was content analysis, a technique 
for the "objective, systematic and quantitative description of the 
manifest content of communication" (Stempel, 1989, p. 125). The 
objective is to define categories so precisely that different people 
can get the same results, and the "results depend upon the procedure 
and not the analyst." For this research, three main variables were 
conceptualized: the presidential agenda, the media agenda and the 
existence of a foreign-policy crisis.
1. The presidential agenda was defined as the primary topics the 
president addressed during each radio address during a four-year 
period, 1997-2000 for Clinton and 2001-2004 for Bush. Those years 
were chosen because of the numerous international crises involving 
the United States that occurred during those years (International 
Crisis Behavior Project: Part II). Transcripts of the radio 
addresses, published in the Public Papers of the President and Weekly 
Compilation of Presidential Documents, were available at the U.S. 
Government Printing Office Access Web site 
(http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wcomp/index.html). The radio addresses 
(N=208 for Clinton and N=158 for Bush) were cataloged[2] and then 
coded as belonging primarily to one of two categories: domestic (0) 
or foreign policy (1). Domestic issues included such topics as health 
care, education, balancing the budget and national holidays. Using 
Andrade and Young's example (1996, p. 592), a speech was counted as a 
foreign-policy speech if the "speech dealt with foreign policy, war 
diplomacy, foreign trade or defense policy." Admittedly, the line 
between domestic and foreign policy – on international trade, for 
example -- can be fuzzy, but global economic issues were considered 
to be foreign-policy issues for this research as some scholars have 
argued they should, especially since the end of the Cold War 
(Baldwin, 1995). Two independent coders did all the coding. In a 
pretest, the coders' level of agreement across variables was 96 percent.
2. The media agenda was defined as next-day coverage in The New York 
Times and The Houston Chronicle. This research was not concerned with 
which other stories were on the front page on any given day, but 
rather with the president's success in getting next-day news coverage 
of the radio address. For each Sunday edition of the newspaper 
following a radio address, the coders used Lexis-Nexis to determine 
which stories mentioned the radio address. Those stories were then 
cataloged, as well. Stories that appeared in The New York Times' Week 
in Review section were not included.
3. The presence of an international crisis involving the United 
States at the time of each radio address was determined using data 
from the International Crisis Behavior Datasets (ICB Online.) The 
beginning dates are the dates at which the decision makers perceived 
the crisis trigger, "the specific act, event or situational change 
which leads decision makers to perceive a threat to basic values, 
time pressure for response and heightened probability of involvement 
in military hostilities" (Wilkenfeld, Brecher and Moser). The crises 
ended when the decision-makers perceived a decline in tensions.
During President Clinton's second term, 1997-2000, the United States 
was involved in four international crises: In 1997, Iraq expelled 
United Nations Special Commission inspectors, who were monitoring the 
country's chemical and biological weapons; Clinton mobilized forces 
in the region. In the summer of 1998, more than 200 people were 
killed in bombings near U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Osama 
bin Laden was blamed, and the U.S. launched air strikes in 
Afghanistan and Sudan. Also in 1998, Iraq once again defied U.S. and 
British demands related to weapons inspections, and the United States 
and Britain responded with air strikes. In 1999, the United States 
joined NATO forces in responding to ethnic violence in Kosovo.
	During President Bush's first term in office, the main international 
crisis involving the United States began, of course, with the 
terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath, including 
the invasion of Afghanistan and hunt for Osama bin Laden and others 
in the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The Afghanistan crisis was 
followed, in 2002 and 2003, by the heated international debate over 
the so-called weapons of mass destruction and the United States-led 
invasion of Iraq. The third international crisis related to the 
United States during Bush's presidency was the development of a 
nuclear weapons program in North Korea. Several months after North 
Korea announced that it was resuming its nuclear weapons program, 
North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Talks 
involving the United States, Russia and China followed and continue.
	Because the entire population of radio addresses for the dates 
specified was examined, as well as all related next-day coverage in 
The New York Times and The Houston Chronicle, parametric statistical 
tests are unnecessary. Descriptive statistics are sufficient because 
they describe the population, and no effort will be made to 
generalize to other newspapers or other presidential terms in office.
Findings
RQ1: How much will Presidents Bush and Clinton focus on foreign vs. 
domestic policy in their weekly radio addresses?

In the second term of his presidency, 1997-2000, Bill Clinton 
delivered 208 radio addresses. Of those, 178, or 86 percent, were on 
domestic policy, while 30, or 14 percent, focused on foreign policy. 
(See Table 1.) From Jan. 27, 2001, when George W. Bush gave his first 
presidential radio address to Feb. 27, 2004, which includes the end 
of the North Korean crisis (the last crisis noted in the 
International Crisis Behavior Dataset), President Bush gave 158 radio 
addresses. Of those, 94, or 59 percent, focused on domestic policy, 
while 41 percent focused on international issues. Although the 
political scientists recorded four international crises involving the 
United States during Clinton's second term and only three during 
Bush's first term, the shocking events of Sept. 11, 2001, probably 
explain Bush's increased emphasis on international issues. Of Bush's 
first 33 radio addresses – all occurring before Sept. 11 – 28, or 85 
percent focused on domestic policy. As noted, over the next three 
years, the percentage of addresses devoted to domestic issues would 
drop to an average of less than 60 percent.
RQ2: How much next-day coverage will the radio addresses receive in 
The New York Times and The Houston Chronicle?

Although both presidents delivered near weekly radio addresses, they 
did not garner equal treatment from The New York Times. Thirty-five 
percent of Clinton's 1997-2000 addresses received next-day coverage 
in the Times, compared with only 9 percent of Bush's 2001-2004 
addresses. As a reference point, consider that 51 percent of 
Clinton's radio addresses received coverage his first year in office 
(Horvit, 2001, 10); over time, Clinton received less coverage in the 
New York Times. Interestingly, the Houston Chronicle gave both men 
less but more equitable coverage, with 9 percent of Bush's speeches 
being reported, compared to 8 percent of Clinton's.
H1: Presidential addresses on foreign policy are more likely to 
generate news coverage than are addresses on domestic policy.

The hypothesis was not supported. (See Table 3.) Overall, 36 percent 
of the radio addresses on domestic policy were reported, compared to 
only 15 percent of the foreign policy addresses.
H2: Presidential addresses on foreign policy are more likely to 
generate more prominent news coverage than speeches on domestic policy.

In the seven-plus years covered in this study, the presidential radio 
addresses were only covered on the front page of either The New York 
Times or Houston Chronicle 11 times. In five cases, the radio address 
focused on foreign policy; in six, the main topic was domestic 
policy. In other terms, about 2 percent of the speeches devoted to 
domestic concerns made the front page, compared with about 5 percent 
of the foreign policy-related addresses. Given that no sampling error 
is involved – the entire population of Times and Chronicle news 
coverage was considered – there is some support for the hypothesis.

H3: During international crises involving the United States, 
presidents will focus more on foreign policy than usual in their 
weekly radio addresses.

	During international crises involving the United States from 1997 to 
2004, nearly 41 percent of Presidents Clinton and Bush's radio 
addresses focused on foreign policy. That compares to 17 percent 
during noncrisis periods. The hypothesis was supported.
H4: Once an international crisis has begun, presidents will use their 
next weekly radio address to discuss foreign policy, and those radio 
addresses will receive more news coverage than do the usual weekly addresses.

	There was little support for the hypothesis. Of the seven 
international crises occurring between 1997 and 2004, only two were 
addressed in the presidents' next scheduled weekly radio addresses. 
On Aug. 7, 1998, bombs near the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 
killed more than 200 people and injured more than 5,000. The next 
day, President Clinton updated Americans on the United States' 
response to the attacks and promised to continue the fight against 
terrorists (Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1998). Judy 
Wiessler of the Houston Chronicle's Washington bureau reported 
Clinton's comments in a Page One story (Wiessler, 1998). According to 
a Lexis-Nexis data search, The New York Times did not report on the 
radio address.
The second international crisis a president discussed in his next 
scheduled radio address was Sept. 11, 2001. On Sept. 15, 2001, four 
days after the shocking attacks, President Bush promised the United 
States would prevail in the fight against terror and tried to offer 
words of comfort and reassurance (Public Papers of the Presidents, 
2001). The New York Times published a transcript of the president's 
speech (New York Times, 2001), but The Houston Chronicle did not 
report on the address.
Interestingly, although President Bush addressed a foreign-policy 
issue in his first radio speech after the Oct. 5, 2002, "eruption" of 
another international crisis – the apparent resumption of North 
Korea's nuclear program – the president did not talk about North 
Korea. Instead, he employed his radio address to reiterate his 
rationale for using force if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein of 
Iraq. From international relations scholars' standpoint, the crisis 
involving Iraq had begun about a month earlier (International Crisis 
Behavior Online).
Overall, the hypothesis was not supported.
H5:  During international crises involving the United States, the 
weekly presidential radio addresses will receive more coverage than 
otherwise and foreign policy addresses will receive more coverage 
than otherwise.

Of the 366 radio addresses examined in this study, 130 were delivered 
during what international relations scholars have termed 
international crises involving the United States: Iraq's failure to 
cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors in 1997 and 1998, the U.S. 
embassy bombings of 1998, the NATO campaign in Kosovo of 1999, the 
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the 
United States' escalating conflict with Iraq beginning in 2002, and 
North Korea's developing nuclear program, announced in 2002. Of the 
130 radio addresses identified as occurring during the crisis period, 
27 percent  received next-day coverage
in either The New York Times or The Houston Chronicle. Of the 236 
radio speeches that occurred during a noncrisis period, 33 percent 
received next-day coverage. Overall, the hypothesis was not supported.
	However, a closer examination of each of the seven crisis periods 
suggests some support for the hypothesis. (See Table 4.)  In three 
crisis periods, two precipitated by terrorist attacks and one 
coinciding with the ongoing North Korean nuclear program, the 
presidents both talked about foreign policy more in their addresses 
and received more coverage. During the three-week crisis that began 
when the U.S. embassies were targeted in 1998, President Clinton 
focused on foreign policy during his radio addresses, and two of the 
three speeches garnered next-day coverage. During the three-month 
conflict with Afghanistan triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist 
attacks, President Bush devoted seven of 12 radio addresses to 
foreign policy, and three received next-day coverage in the New York 
Times or Houston Chronicle. Of his five speeches on domestic issues, 
only one received coverage. Finally, during the 16 months of the 
North Korean nuclear conflict, President Bush's foreign 
policy-related speeches received slightly more coverage. However, the 
president only mentioned North Korea twice in his radio addresses 
during that period, and neither of those speeches received next-day 
coverage in the New York Times or Chronicle. The speeches that did 
receive next-day coverage focused on the war in Iraq, including one 
speech delivered after the conclusion of the "crisis period" as 
defined by international relations scholars.
Discussion
During President Clinton's second term in office, which included four 
international crises involving the United States, the president used 
his radio address to advance his domestic agenda 86 percent of the 
time. In his first months in office, President George W. Bush 
appeared to be heading the same direction, with 85 percent of his 
radio speeches focusing on domestic issues. That percentage dropped 
dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Over the next three 
years, from Jan. 28, 2001, to Feb. 28, 2004, only 59 percent of his 
radio addresses were devoted to domestic issues. The switch in focus 
reflected the new threat to the United States. Indeed, during all 
periods of international crises involving the United States, 
Presidents Bush and Clinton were more likely to address foreign 
policy in their radio addresses than at other times. However, even 
during the international crises, the presidents were more likely to 
speak on domestic issues than international ones.
How might one explain this finding? For starters, all crises are not 
created equal. In only three crisis periods did Presidents Clinton 
and Bush focus more on foreign policy in their radio addresses than 
on domestic policy: the 1998 embassy bombings, the conflict in 
Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and the conflict with Iraq. In the first 
two cases, both triggered by acts of terrorism, the presidents felt 
the need to address the American public about the loss of life and 
the United States' response. In the third case, President Bush was 
trying to win support from Americans and the international community 
for his efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. According to the 
International Crisis Behavior researchers, the "crisis" began Sept. 
12, 2002, when President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly and 
issued an ultimatum on Iraq (ICB Online, Crisis Summary: Iraq 
Regime). The United States-led war against Iraq was not launched 
until March 20, 2003. All the while, the president and his 
administration worked to build support for the war and, after the 
war's commencement, to maintain support for the war in the United 
States. It's not surprising, then, that the president would use the 
radio address – one of many weapons in his public relations arsenal – 
to advance his foreign-policy agenda. The other "crises" did not as 
clearly put U.S. troops at risk. When Iraq refused to cooperate with 
U.N. weapons inspectors in late 1997, that crisis ultimately was 
resolved through negotiations (ICB Online, Crisis Summary: UNSCOM I). 
The crises involving Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 1998 ended largely 
thanks to air assaults, which posed less risk to U.S. troops than a 
ground war would have. And, finally, the ongoing dispute with North 
Korea over its nuclear program is being handled largely through 
diplomatic channels. In their summary of the 2002-2004 crisis, ICB 
researchers stated:
North Korea's course of action threatened U.S. influence over 
limiting the possession of nuclear weapons across the globe. Related, 
the U.S. also perceived a threat to its security because tactical 
strikes, if called for as a means toward derailing the DPRK 
[Democratic People's Republic of Korea] weapons program, would most 
likely be carried out by the U.S. – the prevailing superpower and 
champion over limiting the illegal activities of North Korea (ICB 
Online, Crisis Summary: N Korea Nuclear 2).

The North Korea issue is complex and abstract. Why would a president 
try to address the issue during a radio address? Unless and until the 
president decides a military solution is necessary, the president has 
little need to work on public opinion.
Regardless of what the president and his staff intend to accomplish 
with the scripted weekly speech, there is no guarantee the press will 
find the speech newsworthy. Indeed, although The New York Times 
covered nearly 85 percent of Ronald Reagan's radio addresses in 1983 
(Horvit, 2001, 10), for President Clinton that percentage had dropped 
to 35 percent for 1997-2000. For George W. Bush, who assumed office 
after Clinton, The New York Times' level of  coverage dropped sharply 
lower to 9 percent. Fewer than one in 10 of President Bush's radio 
addresses received next-day coverage in the Times. That percentage 
was similar in the regional Houston Chronicle for both Clinton and 
Bush. Why The New York Times gave Clinton so much more coverage than 
Bush deserves further investigation: Does the disparity suggest a 
possible partisan bias? Perhaps the Times considered Bush's speeches 
less newsworthy and more propagandistic. Times reporter Elizabeth 
Bumiller once wrote that Bush delivers "national radio broadcasts 
that sound like sermons" (Bumiller, 2003, 16). Perhaps "sermons" 
aren't deemed news.
As for the hypotheses that foreign policy addresses would receive 
more coverage and more prominent coverage than speeches about 
domestic policy, there was only partial support.
Routine speeches about foreign policy – that is speeches delivered 
absent an international crisis involving the United States – were no 
more likely to receive coverage than were the domestic speeches. And, 
immediately after a crisis begins, not only did Presidents Bush and 
Clinton not typically use their radio addresses to talk about such a 
crisis, but also the media were no more likely to cover addresses 
about a crisis. Only when lives were lost did the presidents use the 
radio addresses to discuss the crisis and did the press provide more 
coverage. The question then is what kind of foreign-policy addresses 
do get the media's attention. In their conclusion, Wood and Burke 
suggested more research needs to be done that "differentiates on the 
basis of issue salience, importance or issue type" (1998, p. 182).  A 
qualitative analysis may provide richer data on the relationship 
among external events, the presidential agenda and the media's agenda.
Two other factors might also explain the limited coverage of the 
radio addresses, in general: the routine nature of the addresses and 
the routines of newspaper production. Every Saturday, with few 
exceptions, Presidents Clinton and Bush delivered the weekly radio 
address. Although it was hypothesized that the routine event would 
take on new significance to the media during a foreign-policy crisis, 
for the most part, that was not the case. One explanation is that 
presidents have other means to speak to the American people during a 
crisis. When the president believes the time is right to make his 
case for deploying U.S. troops abroad, for example, he can make his 
case whenever he chooses – whether it's Saturday morning or a 
weeknight. The president may be particularly successful in setting 
the media's agenda in terms of next-day coverage when he gives a 
televised address during a crisis, but his purposes – and the media's 
expectations – likely are different during the weekly radio address.
Finally, production routines might influence how much coverage a 
routine Saturday event receives. Many newspapers produce significant 
portions of their Sunday editions in advance, leaving less room for 
"breaking news" than might be available during the week, for example. 
Because the radio broadcasts are routine, they might stand even less 
opportunity to be squeezed into the existing hole for breaking news.
Methodological concerns
In future studies, two methodological issues should be addressed: how 
precisely the radio addresses are coded and how precisely the media 
content is coded, as well. The data were collected at the nominal 
level. That is to say that the presidents' radio addresses were coded 
as one of two categories: domestic policy or foreign policy. Of 
course, several speeches covered both areas, and the coder had to 
determine which category predominated. On a few occasions, however, 
an address was coded as domestic policy, but the subsequent news 
coverage was only on the shorter portion of the speech addressing 
foreign policy.  Rather than collect nominal-level data, future 
researchers might want to collect more precise interval-level data, 
for example, the number of paragraphs related to domestic policy or 
foreign policy. Although such an effort would be labor-intensive, the 
statistical results would be cleaner and perhaps more conclusive. 
Another complication post-Sept. 11, 2001, is that national security 
is not just a foreign-policy issue. Domestic concerns exist, as well. 
As an example, remember the anthrax scare. How should such topics be coded?
In addition, the previous analyses were based on whether a 
president's radio address was mentioned in a next-day story in The 
New York Times or Houston Chronicle. However, aside from merely 
helping to put an issue on the public's agenda, recent agenda-setting 
studies have suggested media content can move beyond telling people 
what to think about -- Cohen's 1963 articulation of the 
agenda-setting theory -- to actually influencing how and what people 
think. (See Schoenbach and Semetko, 1992, and Iyengar and Kinder, 
1993, for example.)
The relationship between public opinion and American foreign policy 
has been studied since at least the 1960s, and in that time several 
theories have emerged. But despite the wide range of studies, there 
is still a lack of understanding of how public opinion influences 
American foreign policy (Powlick and Katz, 1998). Numerous studies 
have shown the public can often be "disengaged and/or uninformed," 
that their information is unsophisticated, and that many people find 
foreign issues confusing. They often base their opinions on foreign 
issues on basic core beliefs. Also, what members of the "foreign 
policy elite'' (such as members of the government or media 
commentators) say about these issues has a large influence on the 
public's opinion. As a result, political debate over a foreign policy 
issue is likely to end in one side or the other successfully framing 
the issue in a way that ties in with a large part of the public's 
beliefs and values (Powlick and Katz, 1998).
If one is concerned, as presidents and their aides presumably are, 
about the connection between media content and public opinion, then 
it makes sense to examine the media content more closely. 
Unfortunately, Martin (1984) did not define what he meant by New York 
Times coverage except to say he examined microfilms of the city 
edition. Presumably, he judged the content by looking at headlines. 
If that is the case, then he was not likely to uncover those 
occasions when a radio address was mentioned in a New York Times 
story but not the focus of the story. Making those distinctions, 
however, is possible through Lexis-Nexis, which can search for any 
word combination in any story, and would shed greater light on the 
president's agenda-setting abilities.
How much attention in a news story is paid to the president's 
viewpoints as expressed in the radio address? How much space is given 
to report on others' opinions, external events and other topics? One 
could examine the media coverage paragraph by paragraph and determine 
the number of paragraphs devoted to the president's opinions and 
words vs. the number of paragraphs devoted to other sources. Such 
coding could greatly enhance media scholars' understanding of the 
president's agenda-setting abilities via the weekly radio addresses.
	Some other limits of the study should be noted or reiterated. This 
pilot study only examined the president's ability to influence media 
coverage one day a week. Sometimes, presidential radio addresses are 
mentioned in news stories or editorial columns later in a week or 
even months after the fact. In addition, this study was limited to 
The New York Times and Houston Chronicle. Although the study provides 
further evidence that the president's ability to influence the media 
agenda is limited – even when it comes to foreign policy where the 
president is considered to be pre-eminent – the results cannot be 
generalized beyond the radio addresses, the years studied or the 
publication studied. A more comprehensive research effort would be required.
Suggestions for Further Research
First, what is clear from this research is that editors at The New 
York Times were far less likely to consider President Bush's radio 
addresses to be newsworthy than they did President Clinton's. This 
research cannot answer why. Did the editors think less of President 
Bush as a president? Do partisan or personal considerations influence 
coverage? In a study of Franklin D. Roosevelt's State of the Union 
speeches and media coverage, researchers found stronger correlations 
between Roosevelt's issue agenda and media coverage in newspapers 
that supported him than those papers that opposed him (Johnson, 
Wanta, et al, 1995). But partisan explanations would not explain why 
Ronald Reagan, for example, received more coverage than did even 
Clinton. Another possible explanation for the decline in news 
coverage from Clinton to Bush is that the press may have become more 
cynical about the radio addresses being used as a public relations 
tool. In general, political scientists have documented a growing 
journalistic cynicism toward politicians coupled with shorter and 
shorter sound bites and verbatim quotes during campaigns, for example 
(Patterson, 1993).
Of course, The New York Times was much more likely to publish stories 
about the presidential radio addresses than was the Houston 
Chronicle. The disparity in their news judgments makes clear the need 
to expand the sample of newspapers studied. The decisions made by one 
prestige newspaper and one regional one cannot be generalized to all, 
or even most, American newspapers.  The coverage in more newspapers 
should be examined. Another avenue for research would be how 
television newscasts handled the radio addresses. With their ability 
to replay sound bites from the speeches, broadcasters might pay more 
attention, relatively speaking, to these routine addresses.
Another important angle to examine is how the radio addresses play in 
other countries and other media. Writing in a 2003 foreign policy 
symposium, Douglas Foyle noted that increasing the "globalization" of 
people around the world – thanks in part to traditional national 
barriers to communication being removed – means there will be more 
interest in foreign policy decisions in other countries. This is 
cross-pollination of citizens in various countries was seen in 2003, 
as the Internet was used in organizing anti-war protests. 
Individuals, Foyle writes, "are beginning to act as globalized 
citizens, evidencing in some circumstances more loyalty to broader 
concepts than to their individual states.'' There will, then, be more 
need for research on the changing role of world opinion on foreign 
policy (Foyle, 2003), and how other countries' media portray events 
is likely key to public opinion in those countries.
	Finally, this study concerned only the question of how successful 
presidents are in influencing the media's agenda as judged by 
next-day news coverage. How presidential agendas are set was not 
examined. The emphasis here was on how much success a president had 
in getting his radio address covered, not how he chose the topic for 
the media address. Nevertheless, Andrade and Young (1996) have found 
that factors such as approval, presidential influence in Congress and 
international events affect the president's emphasis on foreign 
policy in speeches. Do those factors also influence editorial 
decisions about what is newsworthy in a presidential radio address? 
Other issues include the journalists' professional values and what 
stories are available to news editors. Martin (1984), for example, 
notes that little administrative or legislative news is generated on 
Saturdays, the day of the radio addresses. The president's radio 
addresses, usually routine, weekly events, must compete with whatever 
other news stories have been written for the day, and the competition 
may be even steeper for a Sunday edition. How the gatekeepers make 
decisions about covering routine presidential speeches such as the 
radio addresses is a rich area for future study.
	Despite the limitations of this study, it provides further evidence 
that the president's ability to influence the media agenda cannot be 
taken for granted – even in the realm of foreign policy. It also 
points to new questions about the necessary and sufficient conditions 
for predicting when and by which means the president can set the 
media's agenda.
Table 1
On the radio: What Clinton and Bush talked about
Clinton, 1997-2000
Bush, 2001-2004
Foreign policy
30 (14%)
64 (41%)
Domestic policy
178 (86%)
94 (59%)
Totals
208
158*
* through Feb. 27, 2004

Table 2
Next-day news coverage: Comparing presidents
Clinton, 1997-2000
Bush, 2001-2004
Coverage in NYT
73 (35%)
15 (9%)
Coverage in Houston Chronicle
16 (8%)
14 (9%)

Table 3
Next-day news coverage: Comparing topics
Foreign Policy
Domestic Policy
Next-day coverage
14 (15%)
99 (36%)
No coverage
80 (85%)
173 (64%)
Total
94
272


Table 4
Radio Addresses and International Crises
   Crisis
Dates
Domestic Addresses
(No. covered)
Foreign Policy Addresses
(No. covered)
UNSCOM I
Nov. 13, 1997,
to Feb. 23, 1998
12 (7)
3 (0)
U.S. Embassy Bombings
Aug. 7-20, 1998
0
3 (2)
UNSCOM II Operation Desert Fox
Oct. 31-Dec. 20, 1998
6 (5)
3 (0)
Kosovo
Feb. 20-June 10, 1999
15 (6)
3 (0)
Conflict with Afghanistan
Sept. 11-Dec. 7, 2001
5 (1)
7 (3)
Conflict with Iraq
Sept. 12, 2002-May 1, 2003
8 (2)
12 (3)
North Korea's Nuclear Program
Oct. 5, 2002-Feb. 27, 2004
38 (5)
34 (5)
Source for crisis information: International Crisis Behavior (ICB) 
Online http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/icb/

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[1]  Email to the author from Megan Moloney of the White House Radio 
Office on June 9, 1998.
[2]  Only President Bush's radio addresses through Feb. 27, 2004, 
were examined because the ICB data set has U.S.-related international 
crises listed after Feb. 27, 2004.