Title: Governing with the news : the news media as a political institution /
Authors: Cook, Timothy E., 1954-
Publisher: University of Chicago Press,
Year: 1998
Subjects: Government and the press United States History.; Press and politics United States History.
Abstract: From the opening decades of the republic when political parties sponsored newspapers to current governmental practices that actively subsidize the collection and dissemination of the news, the press and the government have been far from independent. Unlike those earlier days, however, the news is no longer produced by a diverse range of individual outlets but is instead the result of a collective institution that exercises collective power. In explaining how the news media of today operate as an intermediary political institution, akin to the party system and interest group system, Cook demonstrates how the differing media strategies used by governmental agencies and branches respond to the constitutional and structural weaknesses inherent in a separation-of-powers system. Cook examines the news media's capacity to perform the political tasks that they have inherited and points the way to a debate on policy solutions in order to hold the news media accountable without treading upon the freedom of the press.
Contents: Part one : the political development of the American news media -- The decline of the sponsored press: American newspapers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- The subsidized news media -- Part two : the media as a political institution -- The institutional news media -- The political news media -- Part three : government by publicity -- The uses of news: theory and (presidential) practice -- Beyond the White House -- Conclusion : the first amendment and the fourth branch- toward redesigning a news media policy.