Question Design in the Press Conferences of U.S. Presidents Harry S. Truman and George W. Bush

Abstract

This research aims at laying out some basic features of question design in presidential press conferences to describe their use to convey adversarial proposition. Underlying some of the observations is the suggestion that the innovation in question design can be an important element of social change in the political interviews context, and broadcast journalism more generally. It is hypothesized that present-day press conferences and political interviews differ from those of the past in their aggressiveness, and this can be conveyed through question design.
For this study, two U.S. presidents George W. Bush (2001-2009) and Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) were selected. Four press conferences were sampled and analyzed. Two press conferences for each president, and each question is analyzed in terms of three basic aspects of adversarialness in question design (a) Question Complexity, (b) Assertiveness, and (c) Accountability.