Effect of Job Approval, Time, and Terrorism Anxiety Upon Deference to the President

Abstract

The creation of foreign policy news is affected by more than ranking the impact and importance of relevant events as they occur. This thesis examines the adversarial nature of US press questioning of the executive during presidential press conferences and whether increases in adversarial questioning during the Bush administration were related to public terrorism anxiety and presidential job approval ratings. Findings include consistent, moderately strong positive correlations between public anxieties regarding terrorist actions, and overtly hostile and negative questioning of Bush administration press conferences; and strong positive correlations between executive approval and question types indicating press deference to the president.