|
|
Article: Governing With The News: The News Media as a Political Institution.
- Article from:
- The Washington Monthly
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 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)
|
The News Media as a Political Institution by Timothy E. Cook University of Chicago, $48
This is a provocative and often wise but ultimately unsatisfying book that ends just as it is gathering steam. After a rewarding historical account of the symbiosis between news reporting and governing (of which the saddest recent example was the death of a West Virginia woman killed by a police car engaged in a high-speed chase, with a TV crew in tow), after a solid but more familiar account of how that relationship operates today, Cook delivers himself of this notion: "It may be that newsmaking helps political actors in the short run but pushes them toward particular issues, ...