The Pittsburgh Press (January 14, 1944)
Roosevelt’s conferences with press drop sharply
President now meets half as often with reporters as he did before war
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt, who used to hold regular twice-a-week press and radio conferences, has averaged only a little better than one a week in the last year.
Wartime travel and occasional illnesses have been the principal reasons given for Mr. Roosevelt’s lessening contacts with reporters.
Continuing to “take it easy” after his recent illness on orders of his doctor, Mr. Roosevelt did not hold his press conference today. He also scheduled no Cabinet meeting, but held three appointments in his residential quarters.
For years it was the President’s custom to meet with newsmen virtually every Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning to make announcements and to submit to free-for-all questioning. These conferences were rarely cancelled and held even when he was out of town for the benefit of reporters traveling with him.
Since Pearl Harbor, however, Mr. Roosevelt has more and more missed his news conferences. Not one is held when he is out of Washington in wartime because reporters now travel with him only on exceptional occasions.
Mr. Roosevelt held only 59 press conferences in 1943, compared with 96 in 1942, 91 in 1941 and 96 in 1940, the third-term campaign year. During the 10 months he was in office in 1933, he held 83 conferences. The total since he took office on March 4, 1933, is 929.
The President has held only three news sessions since Nov. 9, shortly before he left the country for the Cairo and Tehran Conferences. He was out of the country for about five weeks and had no contact with press or radio reporters during that period. For the past two weeks, he has been ill and recovering from an attack of influenza.
He held two news conferences shortly after his return, one on Dec. 17 and again on Dec. 21, and one after Christmas, on Dec. 28, but none since.
A few days after the Dec. 28 conference, Mr. Roosevelt became ill and although he has virtually recovered and is holding a daily schedule of appointments, his physician, RAdm. Ross T. McIntire, has recommended that the President “take it easy” for a while.