Instructor Resource
Graber, Mass Media and American Politics 10e
CQ Press, 2018
Chapter 7: The Struggle for Control: News
from the Presidency
Test Bank
Multiple Choice Questions
1. President Obama spent the first several weeks of his second term dealing with controversy
related to which of the following?
A. the discovery of a massive secret U.S. government surveillance program
B. the administration’s handling of the attack in Benghazi
C. IRS targeting of Tea Party groups
D. all of these
2. Which major branch of government gets the most coverage from mainstream media?
A. executive
B. legislative
C. judicial
D. No majority as coverage is mostly equivalent.
True/False
1. You could say that yesterday’s political press release is today’s politician tweet.
2. The early phases of Obama’s second term and Trump’s first 100 days in office highlighted the
adversarial nature of the relationship between the press and the president.
3. The three major branches of government earn high volumes of coverage from the national
press, in roughly equal proportions.
4. When members of Congress earn a lot of coverage, it is because they have been working hard
on important policy issues.
5. Social media networks are attractive communication venues for leaders because it allows
direct transmission of their messages.
Instructor Resource
Graber, Mass Media and American Politics 10e
CQ Press, 2018
6. The American public is often inattentive during campaigns, tuning out major parts of the
campaign, and the 2016 presidential election was no different.
7. In recent years, the honeymoon period between the press and the president has gotten
considerably longer.
8. Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton earned consistently negative
coverage during the 2016 presidential general election.
Short Answer
1. What are the characteristics of the office of the president that enable it to attract to much more
2. What are the characteristics of Congress that make coverage of only certain members
3. What is a possible upside of receiving less coverage, as in the apparent case of the judiciary?
4. What is the honeymoon period and why is it significant for governance?
5. What are the four presidential communication strategies?
Essay
1. Why is the relationship between political leaders both adversarial and co-dependent? Explain
this paradox and the relationship it has to news content and governance.
2. Describe the relationship between the structure of the three major U.S. government institutions
and the amount and type of coverage they receive (i.e., rank them according to how much they
are covered and the nature of that coverage and then explain why the different types of institution
get more/less and favorable/unfavorable coverage). Then, relate this to their relative levels of
popularity with the citizenry. Finally, build on this to make an argument about why the news
media matter to politics and governance.
3. What are the various media-related reasons that modern presidents have trouble shaping public
opinion with respect to their policy agendas?
4. What are various ways that presidential digital communication has evolved in recent years?
What are some of the implications for citizenship and governance?