Local Media Coverage of Congress and Its Members

What do local media report about Congress and its members. The purpose of this book is to look at what that coverage depends on and to extent to which congressional reporting meets the needs of congressional members and citizens. The chapters reveal that local congressional coverage does indeed vary widely, but in predictable ways. It can be explained to varying degrees by three sets of factors-market-district congruence, characteristics of different types of media, and member-media relations. After an introduction, Chapters 2 through 4 answer the question of what local media cover about Congress and Why. Chapter 5 uses the framework established in the previous chapters to examine election-year coverage, particularly reporting on congressional campaigns. Chapter 6 offers some final observations and a more direct assessment of the extent to which media act as watchdogs over government and a communication link between members of Congress and their constituents.