Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability by R Douglas Arnold

Author:R Douglas Arnold [Arnold, R Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Journalism, Language Arts & Disciplines, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781400849581
Google: 4WoiAQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 19352498
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Overall Patterns

Table 5.4 summarizes how newspapers covered representatives’ participation in various law-making activities—introducing bills, participating in committees, and providing leadership. A few newspapers covered these activities with fair frequency. The top four newspapers published an average of 64 articles that described how local representatives were contributing to policy making. As noted above, many of these were informative articles that gave readers a good sense of what representatives were doing. Often the news stories sparked lively debates on the editorial and op-ed pages about the wisdom of representatives’ actions. These four newspapers were far from typical. The next five newspapers averaged 33 articles, many of them less informative than those in the top set. The bottom five newspapers published an average of 9 articles about representatives’ lawmaking activities—a mere trace.

The articles in the top set demonstrate that journalists are capable of reporting representatives’ lawmaking activities. Moreover, journalists need not work for the largest and richest newspapers in the country to do so. Few people would think first of the Hartford Courant, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Lewiston Morning Tribune, or Tulsa World if they were asked where one might find exemplary coverage of local representatives’ contributions to lawmaking. Why weren’t the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and Houston Chronicle also providing exemplary coverage? They had reporters based in Washington. Their reporters had important representatives to cover, including the chair of the Rules Committee, the chair of Armed Services, and the ranking minority member on Ways and Means.

TABLE 5.4

Coverage of Representatives’ Lawmaking Activities

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