Seldom has our free press faced so great a threat, and yet, the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself. George Washington, upon seeing an unflattering caricature of himself in a local newspaper “got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself,” according to then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Every president since has been tested by the American media.
Since the Founding Era, almost everything about access and expectation, literacy and technology has changed, but in THE PRESIDENTS VS. THE PRESS (Dutton), acclaimed scholar and Lincoln Prize winner Harold Holzer chronicles the eternal battle between the core institutions that define the republic, revealing that the essence of this confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.
About the Author:
Harold Holzer is the recipient of the 2015 Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize. One of the country's leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, Holzer was appointed chairman of the US Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission by President Bill Clinton and awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush. He currently serves as the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, City University of New York.
