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Article: Congress, the Press, and the Public.
- Article from:
- The Washington Monthly
- Article date:
- November 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Washington Monthly Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"Congress-bashing has become a media pastime." That is the thesis of this collection of essays written mostly by academics and edited by two of Washington's stud-duck analysts of Congress: Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein.
In an era when it has become fashionable, especially among politicians and professors, to blame the press for excessively negative coverage, cynical assumptions about congressional ethics, and emphasis on rumor and scandal over issues and institutional process, the authors come up with some interesting findings.
Public support for Congress, as everyone knows, is at ground level, and the authors insist that the media's focus on ...