While the modern presidential press conference was born during the Dwight Eisenhower administration, John F. Kennedy was the first president to effectively use the new medium of television to speak directly to the American people.

It was Kennedy who turned live televised press conferences into a prime-time event. By November 1963, he had held 64 news conferences, an average of one every 16 days. The first, less than a week after his inauguration, was viewed by an estimated 65 million people.

Joe Biden, meanwhile held his first solo press conference last Thursday - 64 days into his administration - and attracted about 6 million cable viewers.

In 1962, pollster George Gallup found that about three in four Americans said they had seen or heard one of Kennedy’s press conferences in the past six months. Ninety-one percent from that number had a favorable impression of his performance which boosted JFK’s then lofty approval rating of 77 percent even more.

In assessing the reaction to Kennedy’s press conferences, Gallup wrote: “To the people across the country, he is projecting a favorable image of a forceful leader who is very well-informed and extremely capable in the verbal footwork of the press conference.”

Kennedy’s youthful appearance, wit, and easygoing communications skills made him a natural with the media and TV audience. Those surveyed noted that the charismatic president never gets rattled, always knows the answers and handles the press gatherings with dignity and charm.

Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, explained that when Kennedy started televised press conferences there were only three or four newspapers in the entire country that carried a full transcript of the conference. What most people read was a distilled version, which is still pretty much the rule. Kennedy and his staff thought that people deserved to hear and see full conferences without delay or editing.

That’s just the opposite of today’s liberal electronic media, which uses preselected snippets or selective editing for the evening news sound bite. Thus, they can promote a president they like, such as Biden, or denigrate one they despise, such as Donald Trump.

In Biden’s first presser last week, it was evident he had the left-leaning media outlets in his pocket. First, there were no hard questions to challenge the president and secondly, the favorable television media used selective editing to cut out Biden’s awkward stumbles and mental lapses for the evening news sound bites.

Biden used a cheat sheet and notes to answer the questions. Even though he had a sheet with photos with a predetermined list of reporters he planned to call on, he constantly paused and stumbled to find his place.

The reporters themselves came under scrutiny for their partisan or nonsubstantive questions. Not a single one focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, the dominant story of the past year and one which affects every American.

Tommy Vietor, co-host of “Pod Save America” and a former Obama administration official, tweeted, “What a ridiculous failure by the press corps to focus on the issue that the vast majority of Americans care about most.”

No conservative journalists were called on by Biden.

DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall later stated it was almost as if the press was afraid to really challenge the president, so as to not prompt a gaffe or cringeworthy response.

Conservative commentator Joe Concha called the press corps a “disgrace,” while conservative strategist Chris Barron said that calling some of the questions softball “might be an insult to softballs.”

After President Kennedy once stated that he was reading more and enjoying it less, Sander Vanocur, veteran newsman from NBC, asked him if he was still an avid newspaper reader.

Kennedy responded: “I would think that Mr. Khrushchev operating a totalitarian system, which has many advantages as far as being able to move in secret, and all the rest - there is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.”

Soon after that, Kennedy and Khrushchev faced off over Russia placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis came very close to erupting into nuclear war. Fortunately, Khrushchev and the Soviets were the ones to blink first and chose not to challenge Kennedy’s blockade of Soviet vessels headed for Cuba.

Last week’s Biden press conference surely had the attention of American adversaries, including the Soviets, Chinese, North Koreans and Iranians. Any Biden weaknesses, such as not having a command of the press conference or knowing the issues, were surely noted by the leaders of these regimes.

If faced with a Cuban missile-type crisis, President Biden will need more than a cheat sheet, CliffsNotes or a room full of friendly reporters to prove his mettle before a hostile dictator.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.