presidential press conferences

[ana_pirogova]

In March 1913, Woodrow Wilson began the first regular US presidential press conferences. By modern standards, they were a strange, awkward affair.

It was 12:45 on 15 March 1913 when a throng of more than 100 reporters trudged warily into the Oval Office.

There was a short silence before one of the journalists dared ask a question of the forbidding figure before them - newly elected President Woodrow Wilson.

No transcript exists of the very first session. But shorthand notes taken by the president's stenographer, Charles Lee Swem, record in detail the dialogue between the commander-in-chief and the press corps during those that followed.

"He was a professor and his view of political leadership was that it was about educating the public," says John Milton Cooper, Wilson's biographer.

"He wanted to elevate the level of public debate. He wanted people to understand."