Governing With the News, Second Edition: The News Media as a Political Institution

by Timothy E. Cook

Overview

The ideal of a neutral, objective press has proven in recent years to be just that--an ideal. In Governing with the News, Timothy E. Cook goes far beyond the single claim that the press is not impartial to argue that the news media are in fact a political institution integral to the day-to-day operations of our government. This updated edition includes a new afterword by the author, which pays close attention to two key developments in the twenty-first century: the accelerating fragmentation of the mass media and the continuing decline of Americans' confidence in the press.

"Provocative and often wise. . . . Cook, who has a complex understanding of the relationship between governing and the news, provides a fascinating account of the origins of this complicity."--James Bennet, Washington Monthly

"[Governing with the News] addresses central issues of media impact and power in fresh, illuminating ways. . . . Cook mines a wealth of historical and organizational literature to assert that the news media are a distinct political institution in our democratic system."--Robert Schmuhl, Commonweal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226115016
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	08/15/2005
Series:	Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Timothy Cook is professor of mass communication and political science and holds the Kevin P. Reilly, Sr., Chair of Political Communication at the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University. He is coauthor of the award-winning Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a Presidential Campaign, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Why Don't We Call Journalists Political Actors?
Part One - The Political Development of the American News Media
2. The Decline of the Sponsored Press: American Newspapers in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
3. The Subsidized News Media
Part Two - The Media as a Political Institution
4. The Institutional News Media
5. The Political News Media
Part Three - Government by Publicity
6. The Uses of News: Theory and (Presidential) Practice
7. Beyond the White House
8. Conclusion: The First Amendment and the Fourth Branch—Toward Redesigning a News Media Policy
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

A dead-on analysis. . . Governing with the News is a model of engaged scholarship. If fully reckoned wtih, it could lgith a path toward public policy for an improved press. Whether the polity or the profession is up to it is another question. But the task just got easier. —The Nation

Jay Rosen

...an impressive treatise on American news media...Cook develops his model of media so skillfully that this reader was anxious for more....Governing with the News deserves to be influential, and readers should respond to it with innovative research and policy.
— Political Science Quarterly

Jeffery J. Mondak

Attempts to make sense of the connection between media strategies and governing strategies through development of a new model of the reporter as a key participant in decision making and policy making and of the news media as a central political force in government. Early chapters interpret the historical record of the American news media, suggesting that its evolution has always been and continues to be intimately tied to political sponsorship, subsidization, and protection. Later chapters develop a model of the news media as institutional and political, address the implications of viewing newspersons as political actors, outline the uses of news for governmental actors, and explore problems of political capacity and accountability in the news media.

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