The relationships between presidential administrations and the media aren’t always rosy, but President Trump’s use of the phrase “fake news” appears to mark a new height of hostility. But is this a unique phenomenon or have media relations been equally tense in previous administrations? John Woolley and Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod of UC Santa Barbara analyzed 35 years of press briefing transcripts to find the answer.
Woolley is the co-director of the American Presidency Project and serves as a professor of political science at the university. Meyer-Gutbrod is a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at UCSB.
To begin their research, the pair turned to the American Presidency Project’s archive of press briefing transcripts. They sifted through press briefings from Clinton through Trump, tracking trends in the language used over time.