The George W. Bush Years

During campaign seasons, the media can cover several events in different cities in one day. The White House Communications Office is responsible for handling the traveling White House press corps and the local media credentialed to attend presidential events. The large volume of requests to attend these functions means space is almost always very limited.

To promote orderly coverage, White House staff tape paper signs to camera positions and chairs for journalists at the location. Camera crews are issued specific spaces on the press riser. There are generally a minimum of two camera positions: the large “main” riser (also referred to as the head-on position) and the “cuts” riser (the position set off to the side of the speaker’s podium). The main camera provides the head-on shot of the speech, while the cut-away camera provides crowd shots and alternative angles of the event added in during editing.

For network television crews, covering these occasions is especially difficult. Trying to provide the president’s speech “live” – along with commentary from a reporter on location – requires special logistics. Setting up lights that don’t block other cameras and providing a place for a reporter to stand, while still being able to record the president’s speech, is sometimes tricky, particularly when the space provided is less than a yard wide. Crews are often stacked on risers three tiers high or more. All this is done just before the president arrives, and then the crews usually must break down before the president leaves the location.

I have two examples of signs that were used to reserve space on press risers:

The first is an 8 ½”x 11” sheet of paper with a black and white image of the White House and text underneath reading “RESERVED SEATING WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS”. This is one of the signs that the White House staff used to organize a presidential event during the George W. Bush administration. It was a generic sign used to reserve space for any member of the White House traveling press. I picked it up after an event and added it to the collection.

The second is a piece of 8 ½”X 11” paper that had the Bush for President campaign logo printed in black ink on plain white paper. It was part of a group of signs that included the name of a specific media organization on each, reserving a spot on the press riser for that crew. In 2004 we usually had one crew on the main (head-on) raiser and a second crew (cuts crew) on the side.