As Timothy Cook has said, the news media crafts stories around individuals rather than social forces, and ôthe President is the most familiar protagonist around.ö The implications for the creation of public policy and the mediaÆs role in that process pivot upon journalistic integrity and objectivity. Although ôscholarly evaluations of the quality of news are often negative, sometimes scathingly so,ö the media is chartered to deliver unbiased news (Zaller 109). The attempts of presidents to shape policies with respect to communication between the President and the media or the media and the public are not frivolous; often, national security as well as national peace are dependent on what the media conveys to the public and how they convey it. In domestic affairs, the media should be sensitive to conflicting viewpoints among the citizenry, and in foreign affairs, they should be sensitive to national security. The mediaÆs role in national security is a crucial one, as knowledge of troop or equipment movement during war must be disclosed only with utmost discernment and caution. In peacetime, the mediaÆs role is still extremely significant due to the power of the media and the concomitant power of the information they could disseminate.
When the President does not or cannot control the media, the country can be in jeopardy. An unbridled pressùespecially one that does not conform to traditional standards of integrity and truth in journalismùcan become a loose cannon. The best the President can do in this situation is to frame information in such a way that the press is least likely to distort it or try to push it into an agenda (Lakoff). The way news is framed can convey unintended connotations that are undesirable where precise facts are needed (Gingrich).
The media has fallen in disfavor in recent years, with a number of embarrassing incidents that have revealed the lack of integrity and failure t
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