Here is the actual opening paragraph of FDR’s original 13 minute “chat” from March 12, 1933. Roosevelt chats with the American people were dubbed fireside chats by CBS reporter Harry Butcher of CBS Radio. After Hoover and his laissez-faire economic policy was shown the door by the American electorate, Roosevelt and his pragmatism were now in charge. He was overwhelmingly elected in 1932 with one of the biggest landslides in electoral college history. Americans needed to feel as though the government was doing something to help them in those rough times.įor Roosevelt, in his own mind, he thought he had the mandate to try almost anything to get the country back going. However, the simple concept of using the media to reach out and talk to the American public about the issues facing the country had never been done to the extent which FDR wanted to use the medium. Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the FDIC are just a few institutions still working from the 1930s. Some of the programs in what was called the New Deal are still in effect almost 90 years later. Some of those plans didn’t work, and some of them did. He was willing to try anything to help get the American people back on their feet. Roosevelt has always been considered to be a pragmatic president. In his inaugural address said that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” One in 12 Americans were homeless and the stock market had lost 87.5% of its value over the previous four years. When Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, unemployment was at an amazing 25%. These “fireside chats “made FDR a media genius long before anyone else grasped the concept of using the media to connect directly with the American people on a regular basis. However, in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) persuaded America to tune in to the radio to listen to him talk about what the government was going to do to help during the Great Depression. Considering all the issues that are happening in our so-called modern world, most Americans could not be bothered to do so. In today’s world, it would be extremely hard for Americans to set aside a portion of their weekend every Saturday night to sit and listen to the president talk about the struggles of the nation.
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