ABSTRACT
Franklin Roosevelt offered "background information" and "off-the-record" clarification for reporters. Nearly half of the nation's 24,000 banks had failed by the time Roosevelt sat for the first time as President before a radio microphone. America had become a radio republic by the time of the Roosevelt presidency. Radio helped Roosevelt pass 15 major pieces of legislation during his first hundred days in office, leading to the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that had the government guarantee bank deposits. Louis Howe was a veteran New York Herald reporter and one of the two men Roosevelt most credited with putting him in the White House. The new President read his aide's line with the vigor and self-assurance that would come to characterize the public's perception of its new leader. "I believe that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," they could hear him saying, "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror that paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance".
