The Limits of Presidential Agenda Setting: Predicting Newspaper Coverage of the Weekly Radio Address

Abstract

Beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1982, U.S. presidents have typically given a radio address every Saturday morning designed primarily to make news in the Sunday newspapers and on the Sunday news programs. A content analysis of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1982 to 2005 shows that coverage of the presidents' addresses has diminished over time both in terms of the percentage of radio addresses covered and the number of paragraphs directly citing the president. Positive predictors of coverage include presidential approval ratings and a foreign-policy topic. Negative influences on coverage include the number of addresses given by all presidents since Reagan, indicating a decreasing lack of novelty, and whether the speech occurred in an election year.