Monday, May 21, 2012

Average Number of News Conferences by Presidency

There was a comment on CNBC this morning about a "rare" press conference being held by president Obama, which sparked this post.  Below is a chart of the average number of press conferences held per year by 20th century presidents.  GW Bush was often criticized for not holding enough press conferences but compared to Nixon and Reagan he was ubiquitous.  Compared to Coolidge, Hoover and Roosevelt though he was less than accessible.  Obama has held press conferences with roughly the same frequency as Bush, although Obama supporters may point out that more of Obama's press conferences have been solo rather than tandem with another political leader.  Either way, there's not necessarily a correlation between quantity and quality.  It's safe to assume there is a high amount of fluff in any presidential press conference.


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