The History of the Press Conference

Ever wonder who was the fool who came up with the concept of a press conference? Those lovely events where someone wearing very nice clothing stands before a podium full of mics, drones on and on while you silently pray the event ends before you die of boredom?

You can blame an ingenious Warner-Pathe News cameraman and an ornery general who was a stickler for military decorum for it.

During World War II, Warner-Pathe’s Cliff Poland joined the Army as a photographer for the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps, following the Joint Chief’s across the globe from event to event to record the proceedings for posterity. One of Poland’s assignments sent him to Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 to record the formal surrender of the Japanese Empire to the Allied Forces aboard the USS Missouri (Poland can be seen behind his newsreel camera on the left in the photo to the right).

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, demanded absolute dignity for the proceedings about to take place on the Missouri‘s 01 level deck  right down to the words he chose in his speech announcing the surrender to the world – and made it absolutely clear that he would not tolerate the attending newsmen sticking a cluster of microphones in his face.

So Cliff Poland, in a fit of ingenuity, rigged up a stand to hold the cluster of microphones in a manner that was acceptable to the general, history was made upon the teakwood decks of the Missouri and a system still used in press conferences today was born.