First Ladies and the Press: The Unfinished Partnership of the Media Age / Edition 1

by Maurine H. Beasley, Caryl Rivers

Overview

At her first press conference, Eleanor Roosevelt, uncertain of her role as hostess or leader, passed a box of candied grapefruit peel to the thirty-five women journalists. Nearly sixty years later, Hillary Clinton, an accomplished professional woman and lawyer, tried to mollify her critics by handing out her chocolate-chip cookie recipe. These exchanges tells us as much about the social—and political—roles of women in America as they do about the relation of the first lady to the press and the public. Looking at the personal interaction between each first lady from Martha Washington to Laura Bush and the mass media of her day, Maurine H. Beasley traces the growth of the institution of the first lady as a part of the American political system. Her work shows how media coverage of first ladies, often limited to stereotypical ideas about women, has not adequately reflected the importance of their role.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810123120
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2005
Series:	Medill Visions Of The American Press
Edition description:	1
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Maurine H. Beasley is a professor in the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt and the Media: A Public Quest for Self-Fulfillment (University of Illinois, 1987) and the coeditor of Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism (Strata Publishing, 2003).

Carol Rivers is a professor of Journalism in the College of Communication at Boston Unviersity. A former White House correspondent, she is author of Slick Spins and Fractured Facts: How Cultural Myths Distort the News and Camelot, a novel set in the Kennedy administration.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Caryl Rivers
Preface
1. Eleanor Roosevelt and the "Newspaper Girls"
2. Early First Ladies and the Public Sphere
3. Jackie Kennedy and Construction of Camelot
4. First Ladies as Political Helpmates: Lady Bird Johnson and Pat Nixon
5. First Ladies and Feminism: Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter
6. First Ladies and Image-Making: Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush
7. Hillary Rodham Clinton as Media Polarizer
8. Laura Bush as Emblem of National Caring
9. Looking Ahead
Notes 
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Beasley's work is valuable because of the lessons learned through her historical analysis."  —American Journalism

From the Publisher