Jefferson, who spoke feelingly of the importance of freedom of the press, nevertheless could declare: "Newspapers present for the most part only a caricature of disaffected minds."
Although Madison was the author of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press, he felt wounded by the press's carping about his conduct of the War of 1812.
During the Mexican War, Polk regarded newspaper criticism as nothing less than treason. So it has been as presidents and writers for the media wrestle with each other like scorpions in a bottle.
Lincoln owed his nomination to two editors of Chicago newspapers; yet he punished editors of Confederate sheets. His relations with the press were often stormy, and cartoonists pilloried him relentlessly.
Ulysses S. Grant, seared by the revelation of corruption in his administration, felt obliged to say as he closed his second inaugural address that from the time of his first campaign in 1868 he had "been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history."
Grover Cleveland, a secretive man, was openly hostile to the press, too. In his day newsmen did not even have working space in the White House. They were forced to stand outside in all kinds of weather and hope to buttonhole visitors as they entered or departed. When a journalist asked the president to appoint a new secretary who might be good to newspapermen, Cleveland responded: "I have a notion to appoint a man who will be good to me." Cleveland remains the only president who refused to attend the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, the insider association of Washington journalists founded in 1885 where the president and the press attired in white tie and tails "singe but do not burn" each other with more or less good-natured sallies.
William McKinley (1897–1901), had the same wariness toward the press. Talking to journalists a few days after having spoken before a gathering of experts, he said wryly: "This is the second time that I have been called upon this week to address a congress of inventors."
Until the 1920’s, the news media consisted entirely of print media: newspapers and magazines. What Americans knew about the world of national politics and government, they knew because they read it.
They read about the president, of course, but they could just as easily read about Congress and the Supreme Court. Partly as result of this, presidents did not dominate the public space.
The journalist Fred Barnes recently remarked that in the contemporary national news media, every question boils down to one: “How is the president doing?” That simply was not the case during most of our history.
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