Keeping Control of the Narrative
The media meets first ladies and their press secretaries who help mold the messages.
This is the second story in a two-part series analyzing the evolving relationship between America’s modern first ladies and the media.
Since the days of Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson, a first lady’s press secretary has had her work cut out for her.
As press secretary, the main goal is to portray a fulsome picture of the first lady that includes her values, passions and work, whether it’s traditional hostess duties at the White House or policy and advocacy initiatives, says Lisa Caputo, who served as Hillary Clinton’s press secretary from 1992-1996 and is now executive vice president and chief marketing, communications and customer experience officer for The Travelers Companies, Inc. With Hillary Clinton, this was a difficult task, because she “didn’t neatly fit into what one may categorize as the ‘traditional’ role of the first lady,” Caputo says.
“I think trying to get the media, and therefore the public, to see the Hillary Clinton that I knew and respected so much, and to see her many facets and to see that complete picture, was the biggest challenge,” Caputo says.
“I think trying to get the media, and therefore the public, to see the Hillary Clinton that I knew and respected so much, and to see her many facets and to see that complete picture, was the biggest challenge,” Caputo says.
Unlike her husband President Bill Clinton, Clinton had no dedicated press corps to cover her, and media coverage of her was all across the board, Caputo says. When Hillary Clinton testified before Congress in 1993 about her work as chair of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, newsrooms debated which kind of reporter they would send to cover the testimony, Caputo says. Each organization made a different choice, Caputo says, leading to huge differences in the coverage. Caputo recalls hard news coverage about the substance of the health care policy the Clinton administration was proposing, style section coverage about what Clinton was wearing, a story from a Capitol Hill reporter about the politics of the proposal, and another story about how Hillary Clinton was working on policy by day and hosting the president of France at night.
“There was no consistent story,” Caputo says. “I joked around and called it the ‘five faces of Eve’ – everybody had their own take. She was a constant debate in newsrooms about, how do we cover her?”
Clinton was often a polarizing figure in the national media, something Caputo attributes to the fact that she came to the White House as a working mother from her job as a practicing lawyer, at a transitional time for women in society. Some dubbed Clinton a “Rorschach test,” a woman that everyone interpreted subjectively based on their own views and experiences. Clinton represented “the debate about the role of women that was going on in households across our country, which is do I want my wife and daughter to stay home and raise a family, or do I want them to have a career?” Caputo says.
“Hillary Clinton did both, and did it on a very public stage,” Caputo says. “I think it’s a debate because many believe you can’t do both and do both well, that something has to give, that there’s some sort of sacrifice. I think in many ways she represented that debate, and that debate still goes on to this day.”
Clinton represented “the debate about the role of women that was going on in households across our country, which is do I want my wife and daughter to stay home and raise a family, or do I want them to have a career?” Caputo says.
“Hillary Clinton did both, and did it on a very public stage,” Caputo says.
One area where Clinton shined was her connection with local media. Caputo and her team took Clinton on the road to talk to constituents, where local media covered her substantively in terms of “what she was talking about.”
“People could observe, not just how bright she was and how she could speak in organized paragraphs, but also her empathy for people and how much of a dedicated public servant she was,” Caputo says.
Controlling the message
While national media has been accused of not dedicating enough coverage to the first lady, local media has traditionally covered first ladies’ visits to their communities substantively, according to first ladies scholar and Quinnipiac University media studies professor Lisa Burns, who edited the book “Media Relations and the Modern First Lady.” Local reporters get access to a national figure they wouldn’t normally cover, and the first lady is able to “microtarget” messaging to a specific community.
“I think anytime the first lady comes to your vicinity, that’s a great opportunity for both sides,” Burns says.
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has been able to successfully leverage local media to campaign for her husband, President Joe Biden, ahead of the 2024 election.
“It lets you talk about the very specific needs of that community, and let them know, the president cares about this – I’m here as his spokesperson, and his surrogate, and I can tell you this is something he is working on,” Burns says.
Much of Dr. Biden’s campaign efforts have not been picked up by national media, Burns says. But, she is successfully leveraging social media – another tool that’s been a public relations boon for modern first ladies. Biden is taking advantage of outlets like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook to promote her advocacy efforts, including women’s health research and military family initiatives. The technique was debuted by Michelle Obama, who was in the White House at a time when the popularity of social media apps was transforming the way Americans communicate.
Michelle Obama broadened the first lady’s communication strategy to a “whole new world,” reaching a new audience with her use of 21st century technology like social media, along with pop culture, television, and fashion.
“I believe [Obama] felt the press may or may not cover the story in the way that she wanted, and she controlled the message very effectively by using a variety of platforms that were open to her that no other first lady really had,” says Nancy Kegan Smith, president of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education.
Obama became the first, first lady to send a tweet in 2011, when she used Twitter (now X) to call on Americans to support military families – one of her signature initiatives, along with healthy families and education.
Social media allows first ladies a “clear path to control their messaging” by delivering it to the public without the need for the media as an intermediary, Burns says. In many ways, this puts reporters in a reactive stance, figuring out how to cover how the first lady is communicating to her audience.
“We live in a social media world,” Zirinsky says. “If the first lady or her staff doesn’t have the first lady on social, you’re missing an enormous opportunity to miss a wider scope of people – young people.”
“We live in a social media world,” says Susan Zirinsky, the president of See It Now Studios and the former president and senior executive producer of CBS News, the first woman to hold the position in the history of the network. “If the first lady or her staff doesn’t have the first lady on social, you’re missing an enormous opportunity to miss a wider scope of people – young people.”
The West Wing’s role
Support from a first lady’s husband, the president – or the lack of it – is also a driving factor in how they’re portrayed in the media, says Anita McBride, a FLARE founding member and executive-in-residence at American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. A president’s overall public image, positive or negative, can also transfer to media interpretations of the first lady, she says. In Pat Nixon’s case, the West Wing attempted to minimize her press coverage and didn’t invite the press to cover initiatives she was pursuing, according to Burns.
“Consequently she was covered less, and when she was covered I think the portrayals of her were not as favorable as they should have been,” McBride says, citing the “Plastic Pat” nickname. “She was doing tremendous work and work that was true to her, but there’s an example of the West Wing making it harder for you, and the president has some level of mixed popularity and unpopularity, and that spills over.”
The Nixon administration also painted the press as “the enemy” – a parallel Burns sees with the Trump administration. Both administrations took an adversarial stance with the press and also clamped down on messaging coming out of the East Wing, Burns says. In Melania Trump’s case, the same press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, was assigned to both the president and the first lady.
“It’s a good decision if you really want to control the message that tightly, but being a press secretary to the president is more than a full time job – [Grisham] did not have time for Melania,” Burns says.
Most of Trump’s initiatives, such as her BE BEST child welfare campaign, received little press traction, Burns says, while the controversial jacket she wore on a visit to the U.S. border dominated news cycles. Overall, Burns concludes in her book that first ladies who take more of a reactive stance, waiting until a scandal or some other controversy breaks to engage with the press, tend to have more negative press coverage.
While a first lady’s success as a communicator can significantly help her promote her message, it’s only one part of a complex role, Smith says. First ladies can have widespread impacts outside of their role in the public eye: “Sometimes a first lady can affect a life just by taking a few minutes to talk to someone and encouraging them,” she says.
But being a powerful communicator can be an asset when it comes to a first lady defining her own legacy for generations to come.
“I think it’s hard these days, if you’re not a good communicator as a first lady, you certainly handicap history’s evaluation of what you have done,” Smith says.