Informing the Media and the American Public

The press conference, once seen as a staple of media relations, has taken a backseat to content electronically being released through the Internet. However there are still plenty of instances where a press conference is useful when one needs to address issues that are controversial or complex. Though this instance was not a press conference in the traditional sense where reporters have opportunities to ask questions, it served the same purpose as the senator was addressing questions that had already been asked.

 

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s speech last Tuesday on race in America was intended to sway voters in the upcoming Pennsylvania election, but it also served a more immediate purpose. Two weeks ago video clips began circulating on the Internet and in political talk shows of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., a man Sen. Obama has described as his spiritual leader and mentor, denouncing America’s foreign policy as being terrorist in nature. The Reverend preached that 9/11 was a result of U.S. foreign policy supporting terrorist abroad, and that “What we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing under a different color flag.”

 

For a presidential candidate to have described this reverend as his mentor, this calls for some urgent damage control. More and more clips began emerging and it became clear that this issue was only gaining momentum. A New York Times article stated that Sen. Obama “concluded over the weekend that he had failed to resolve the questions” and “wanted to address the firestorm in a speech.”

 

Sen. Obama and his campaign staff were facing an issue that had garnered media attention on the national and international level. I can imagine far too many news sources were writing or broadcasting on the issue for the campaign to efficiently respond to individual media inquires. A high-profile speech would be an opportunity for the senator to address the issue and make sure he had a forum to state his case. Rather than the media having to follow this story based on press releases from his campaign, Sen. Obama instead chose to address the issue head on in front of both the media and the American public. A televised speech allowed Sen. Obama to inform the media, but also to directly send his message to the America viewers who watched the speech live, or afterwards on YouTube.

-Brian