Abbott eluding media scrutiny
Amid spike, governor prefers TV interviews to in-depth exchanges
One night earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott was pressed about his coronavirus response by a veteran Texas journalist on live television.
Had he waited too long to require masks? Why weren’t field hospitals already set up in struggling communities? If it’s safe enough for teachers to return to the classroom this fall, why are policymakers still al- lowed to stay home?
“Some people I know are showing up in their offices,” Abbott replied at one point, sounding rattled. “I haven’t gone down the hallway and checked attendance.”
The exchange, which aired on KRGV Channel 5 News in McAllen, was a rare glimpse of a governor who likes to radiate poise and pragmatism, suddenly forced on the defensive amid a mounting health crisis that he alone has sought to control.
And because it aired on a local network, relatively few Texans saw it.
As state leaders across the country struggle to combat an evolving pandemic, many have done so on immense public stages, regularly going before scrums of reporters, fielding pointed questions and using their platforms to deliver harsh straight talk — about how far their states have come and how far they have to go.
But in Texas, the governor, a Republican safely in his second term, has mostly retreated, dispensing with the regular press briefings he delivered early on and instead taking his message almost exclusively to local TV networks, where he appears in short bursts of five to eight minutes, often three or four
times each night.
From a DIY satellite studio in downtown Austin, Abbott delivers a barrage of nightly remarks, often jabbing the air like an emphatic father as he pivots from one question to the next, turning many into prompts for whatever missive he hopes to convey that day. For a time, it was an indictment of local officials who had demanded stricter safety orders. More recently, he himself has called for stricter enforcement as infections soar.
“His hand movements and the way he listens, he’s projecting competence,” said Jason Loviglio, a professor of media and communications studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
That portrayal could not come at a better time for Abbott, who entered the pandemic as one of the state’s most popular Republicans, only to see his approval ratings plummet amid the now-halted reopening. The governor has been attacked by Democrats and some health experts since he rushed to restart the economy before the state had all the tools in place to monitor the virus.
The governor’s staff says the media approach allows him to tailor his message to a variety of communities each day — no small feat in a state as big and diverse as Texas. While Abbott has not held an open, statewide COVID-19 briefing since May 5, he has appeared on local TV outlets more than 200 times since mid-May, when his staff began sharing his daily television schedules with the press.
“Local TV remains the best way to get your message out to a large group of people,” said his spokesman, John Wittman.
But the strategy is also almost undoubtedly political, according to media and political experts, who say that bypassing mainstream news outlets gives Abbott leeway to say what he wants, when he wants and to the type of people he wants listening.
“Candidates and campaigns that don’t think they get good coverage try to avoid national outlets and go directly to local constituents,” said Daron Shaw, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “That is a timehonored tactic.”
Taking cues from Trump?
The approach has been used by Texas Republicans before, albeit more sparingly, and goes all the way back to the Reagan administration, when the president famously avoided the White House press pool and heavily favored local TV outlets.
As the White House correspondent for the New York Times observed in 1984, “Essentially, the press is relegated to the role of passive spectator.”
Viewers of local TV news are predominantly older, and older Texans are Abbott’s strongest supporters. The exchanges are short and aired live, and interviewers usually have lots of topics to cover, making it difficult to fact-check on the spot or follow up on a specific point.
“You don’t want to interrupt because he’s explaining something, but at the same time you have to get in a number of questions before that window ends,” said Randy Beamer, a co-anchor who has interviewed Abbott at WOAI in San Antonio.
The exchanges also tend to be less combative.
“Anchors do not make their bones by being aggressive,” Loviglio said. “The person in the White House press briefing room does. We want anchors to be our friends, our guides, our reassurers.”
Dan Shelley, who heads the Radio Television Digital News Association in New York, said Abbott’s selective approach is part of a broader affront to press freedoms unfolding at the national level, where reporters are regularly disparaged by President Donald Trump in briefings and on social media.
“I think what you’re seeing in a lot of red states is leaders there taking cues from the federal government’s response, doing their own versions of the federal government’s communication strategy,” Shelley said.
Most of Abbott’s television appearances have been in North and Central Texas, including the Panhandle, a conservative stretch that was hit hard by outbreaks at meatpacking plants. The governor has appeared in East Texas, where Houston and other coastal cities are being ravaged by the virus, nearly 20 percent of the time, according to a review of his schedules.
“I would be shocked if you can find another governor who has done more interviews than Greg Abbott,” Wittman said.
The governor held two other pandemic-related briefings in Austin after May 5 but limited participation to just two reporters, which his team selected. His team allowed two questions about the pandemic at an unrelated event Thursday with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue.
Public health vs. ideology
Other governors have chosen a more conventional approach, appearing in frequent news conferences, some of which grew so popular early on that they took on lives of their own. In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s 2 p.m.updates were christened “Wine with DeWine.” At the height of New York’s outbreak, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s briefings became such a trusted staple that he drew calls to mount a late presidential run.
“He was on camera every day, reliably, telling the latest statistics he had available to him and offering time for the reporters present to ask questions,” said Keren Henderson, a professor of broadcast and digital journalism at Syracuse University.
But Abbott, a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice who is closely aligned with the Trump administration, tends to shy away from confrontation, at least publicly.
“Press conferences are not his style,” Shaw said. “I think he actually is pretty good on those platforms — I certainly feel that way when I watch him. But I don’t feel like he thinks those are working.”
“It’s very interesting to watch him operate in this space,” Shaw added, “because the public health responsibilities he has are in conflict with the ideology of his core constituency — Republicans who are conservative and by definition are skeptical of using government.”
Last month, editors at five of the state’s biggest outlets — the Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman and Texas Tribune — urged the governor in a letter to make himself more available for questioning.
“It is hard to imagine a more important time for the media to pursue answers on behalf of our readers and the public as you explain the government’s response to a historic pandemic and use your emergency powers to shape it,” they wrote.
The letter was never answered, and Wittman declined to comment on its status, saying only that the governor’s staff will continue to “open press conferences as much as possible.”