The Media and Presidential Rhetoric

Jim A. Kuypers, an assistant professor of communication at Virginia Tech, recently authored a book entitled "Bush's War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age." According to an article by Jean Elliott , "Overall, Kuypers examined themes about 9/11 and the War on Terror that the President used, and compared them to the themes that the press used when reporting on what the president said." According to the Wall Street Journal Online, Bush's approval ratings are slipping. But it's easy to forget how much power the press has as a medium between us and President Bush. Although there is a trend where the public's trust in the government is decreasing, how much faith are we putting in the media to effectively and accurately relay Bush's messages to us? To what degree does the media play a role in this increasing public distrust? Kuypers writes that within eight weeks after 9/11, the press "began to intentionally ignore certain information the president was sharing, and instead reframed the president's themes or intentionally introduced new material to shift the focus." We know that the framing of questions and answer choices in polls can completely affect the accuracy of the poll. Kuypers asserts that major news corporations such as CBS, ABC, NBC, and The New York Times are framing Bush's speeches in their own way, proving that we should not take the integrity of their coverage for granted.