Covering Congress

Everette Dennis, Everette Dennis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351525428
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Observers of media-government relations most often think first of conflicts with the executive branch, yet interactions between Congress and the media have been extensive and varied since the first Washington "correspondents" began sending dispatches from the sessions of Congress. In recent years the relationship between Congress and the news media has grown more complex. Coverage of Congress by the print and electronic media is extensive. At the same tune, Congress has increasing power to make communications policy that will have an important impact on the ability of the media to conduct their affairs, both economically and politically. Covering Congress explores those aspects of the relationship between the media and Congress that shape the news that reaches an information-seeking public.The contributors consider Congress as the source of much news as well as a great deal of self-promotion. They note there is neither a broad nor deep understanding of our national legislature in the United States. Contributors try to remedy this shortcoming by looking at the overall picture, the media scene on Capitol Hill, the messages that reach beyond Washington, and the history of relations between the Congress and the press. They discuss such issues as: the relationship Newt Gingrich has forged between his office and the media, perhaps at his own peril; the importance of speed over substance when reporting from Capitol Hill; the unflattering image of Congress as depicted in political cartoons; and the unparalleled power wielded by Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn when he dealt with the national media.Congress depends on the media to reach the public but also has considerable muscle to shape its media relations when it has strong leadership and a coherent plan. It usually lacks these, but Congress does much to try to project a friendly face to the public through the media, facilitating interviews hi Capitol Hill radio and television studios. Regardless of what happens in any particular election, it is clear that Congress is fully alert to the modern communications age and that the consequences of this encounter are likely to be accentuated in the years ahead. Covering Congress is a necessary addition to the libraries of communications scholars, media specialists, political scientists, historians, and sociologists.

Part I
Overviews

Congressional Index

Carrie Klein

Number of journalists accredited to the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives press galleries: 7142¹

Number of U.S. senators: 100

Ratio of journalists to senators: 71:1

Number of U.S. representatives: 435

Ratio of journalists to U.S. representatives: 16:1

Number of U.S. senators and representatives who worked as attorneys before entering Congress: 204²

Number who worked as journalists: 24³

Ratio of attorneys to journalists in Congress: 8.5:1

Year human features first transmitted by television: 1925⁴

Year U.S. House of Representatives first allowed television cameras to broadcast its proceedings: 1979⁵

Year U.S. Senate first allowed television cameras to broadcast its proceedings: 1986⁶

Percentage of U.S. representatives who have been elected since the House proceedings were first televised: 83⁷

Percentage who have been elected since the Macintosh personal computer was introduced: 65⁸

Percentage who have e-mail addresses: 30⁹

Average age of a U.S. senator: 59

Average age of a U.S. senator with both e-mail and a home page on the Internet: 56

Average age of a U.S. senator with neither e-mail nor a home page on the Internet: 63¹⁰

Number of U.S. Senate receptionists who did not know what a home page on the Internet was: 21

Number of U.S. senators with home pages on the Internet whose receptionist did not know what a home page was: 6¹¹

Number of telephone access lines per square mile in Wyoming: 2.63

Number of telephone access lines per square mile in the District of Columbia: 12,545¹²

Number of Americans who watch C-SPAN at least once during an average week: 16.7 million¹³

Number who watch at least one National Football League game during an average week in football season: 80 million¹⁴

Number of Americans who watched C-SPAN at least once during a recent 12-month period: 68 million¹⁵

Number who watched the O.J. Simpson “Bronco chase”: 95 million¹⁶

Number who watched the O.J. Simpson verdict: 150 million¹⁷

Percentage of Americans 18 and over who watch television: 92¹⁸

Percentage who listen to the radio: 85¹⁹

Percentage who read a newspaper: 83²⁰

Percentage who voted in the 1992 presidential election: 55²¹

Percentage who voted in the 1994 congressional elections: 39²²

Carrie Klein was an aide to former Senator Mark O. Hatfield, R-Ore.

1. Source: Merrie Baker, U.S. Senate press gallery, Washington.

2. Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 1996 (Washington: National Journal, 1995). There were 533 U.S. senators and representatives when the survey was conducted in November 1995 because of the resignations of U.S. Sen. Robert Packwood, R-Ore., and U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-Il1..

3. Ibid.

4. The 1994 Information Please Almanac: The Ultimate Browser’s Reference (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), p. 112.

5. Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to Congress, 4th edition (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1991) p. 522.

6. Ibid.

7. Barone and Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 1996.

8. The 1994 Information Please Almanac: The Ultimate Browser’s Reference.

9. Survey of the U.S. House of Representatives Constituent Electronic Mail System” on the Thomas system.

10. Telephone survey of 99 Senate offices by Carrie Klein, Nov. 16, 1995. Age information from Barone and Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 1996.

11. Telephone survey of 99 Senate offices by Carrie Klein, Nov. 16, 1995.

12. Source: Amy Fabian, Public Affairs Office, U.S. Telephone Association, Washington.

13. “Unplugged,” National Journal, Nov. 4, 1995, p. 2735, citing a Mediamark Research study of C-SPAN viewers of voting age.

14. Source: Andrew Fink, Public Relations Department, National Football League, New York.

15. “Unplugged,” National Journal, Nov. 4, 1995, p. 2736, citing a Statistical Research Inc. study of C-SPAN viewers.

16. “White v. Black,” Newsweek, Oct. 16, 1995, p. 30.

17. Ibid, p. 31.

18. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995. Fig. No. 898. “Multimedia Audiences—Summary: 1994,” p. 571.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995. Fig. No. 462, “Resident Population of Voting Age and Percent Casting Vote: 1988– 1994,” p 291.

22. Source: Curtis Gans, Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, Washington.

1
Congress—Boom Box and Black Box

Ross K. Baker

The process by which public policy is made in the United States is now largely incomprehensible to its citizens. At the heart of public policy-making is Congress, whose members pour forth millions of reams of paper and billions of decibels of sound bites to communicate with bewildered citizens without really improving their understanding of legislative processes. Indeed, much of what flows from Congress advertises rather than teaches, propagandizes rather than enlightens and obfuscates rather than clarifies. Viewed from the outside, Congress is simultaneously a black box, in which invisible wheels, cogs, gears and semiconductors whir away unseen and uncomprehended by Americans, and a loud and vulgar boom box, spewing forth self-serving and fatuous hype, designed to convince people that they are being served by tribunes of unsurpassed virtue and wisdom. The acoustical boost for the politicians’ message is provided mostly by journalists. What is less clear is how good a job journalists are doing helping citizens understand the inner workings of Congress. Journalists may be better as amplifiers than as clarifiers.

Messages do flow the other way in the form of letters, phone calls, email and faxes from individuals and interest groups protesting, demanding relief or just venting, but there is no decent exchange between the blaring self-promotion of the officeholders and the entreaties and importunings of the constituents. The messages fly back and forth like so many salvos of arrows loosed by hostile tribes, some of which hit their target while others bury themselves ineffectually in the ground. From the point of view of the members of Congress, knowing what it is that is eating at their constituents is obviously essential in a representative republic, but that is now reduced to a process of divination in which the role of soothsayer is performed by pollsters. And the job does get done well enough for the officeholders to get some sense of the appetites and aversions of their voters. The voters, however, are largely in the dark about how they are governed. It is no simple matter to ascribe causes to this disconnection, to assign responsibility or even to say for certain what the effects are of a governmental process that is significantly less fathomable to citizens than the workings of a VCR. There is a pressing need for a decent, user-friendly owner’s manual to government that politicians, for reasons we shall explore in this essay, have little incentive to provide. Journalists are uniquely positioned to provide the technical data to citizens, but it often comes off looking like Fortran.

I want to start first with the causes of citizen incomprehension. I suspect that, to a greater or lesser extent, this has always been a problem. I have reason to believe that the first time the fanciful schematic “How a Bill Becomes Law” was being printed in a civics textbook, bills were becoming laws in a manner quite a bit different from the winged measure shown flying from one house of Congress to the other and then on to the White House. But mostly, there was a legislative process with a beginning and an end that could be explained to citizens, either by a patient politician or journalist, or acquired by citizens themselves willing to incur the modest information costs involved.

Ideally, the legislative process should begin with a member of Congress laying the groundwork for a change in policy by staging an agenda-setting activity, introducing the bill and getting the chairman of a committee to hold hearings. A few interest groups would weigh in for or against, the initiator would lose a few times, reintroduce it and, some-where down the road, a signing ceremony would take place on the White House lawn, and the member would go back to his office with a framed copy of the measure and some souvenir ballpoint pens.

Yet the process, so far as the most important legislation affecting the largest number of Americans in the most profound ways is concerned, has now become so distended in dimension and problematical in outcome that any effort to diagram it would result in a schematic approximating in complexity the wiring on a nuclear submarine.

Getting on the national agenda may now actually be easier due to the proliferation of media that can cultivate an idea and bring it to the attention of the public. The idea, however, now has greater competition for the attention of the public because there are so many politicians out there using so many media to float so many messages. Journalists can play an important role in winnowing the multitude of claims for places on the national agenda that come from congressional offices, but sadly, they do not usually do a very good job of filtering agenda items in terms of their intrinsic importance. This is not a censorship role: it is, however, one of signaling priorities.

Once policy change takes the form of legislation, it is likely to have to face not one congressional committee but two or perhaps three. This comes about as a result of the practice of multiple referrals, which was designed to spread the action on legislation by giving more than one committee legislative jurisdiction over a bill, and it means more than simply two or three sets of hearings. It means that the interest groups that hover in the gravitational field of each of these committees get involved, and the number of points at which a bill can be altered, or killed altogether, increases.

The coverage of legislative hearings by journalists, however, varies in thoroughness not according to the importance of the legislation under examination, but rather to the celebrity value of the witnesses or their capacity to evoke anger or pathos. If the legislation is at all important, the White House will have become involved, and all kinds of messages will be coursing back and forth along Pennsylvania Avenue. There may be a bill-signing somewhere down the road, but it will be the product of a process that will have involved arcane legislative rules, votes structured in such a way as to allow members to avoid political exposure and considerable public posturing usually characterized by dire threats that typically mask some groping for compromise that is going on behind the scenes. And the result is designed to achieve a Lewis Carroll conclusion: all have won and all shall have prizes.

Admittedly, the process was designed to make change difficult; the framers of the Constitution did not prize legislative efficiency. But neither did they want a system of such baffling opacity that no one could figure out what was going on in government.

In theory, we now have a process that gives programs legal authority to operate and sets a ceiling on the money that they can spend. That is supposed to be followed by a process in which the actual funds are appropriated, and since 1975 there has been a third process by which Congress harmonizes revenues with expenditures in a reconciliation bill. Yet it is difficult to remember any recent time when the process unfolded with such directness and simplicity. You now have appropriations approved before authorizations, wholesale legislating on appropriations in clear violation of congressional rules and even, in 1982, the sly wink at the constitutional requirement that all revenue bills originate in the House when the Senate initiated that year’s Tax Equity and Fiscal Relief Act. And these devices are simple compared to the array of gimmicks—usually associated with fiscal politics—such as lockboxes, fire walls, king-of-the-hill amendments and other procedural legerdemain that render lawmaking as baffling to Americans as the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding.

All resorts to procedural complexity and specialization of vocabulary are a conspiracy against the laity. The laity, in this case, is not only the average citizen with a limited tolerance for insider politics, but also what has been called “the attentive public,” a group one step below journalists in political sophistication. Procedural complexity furnishes that rarest and most treasured of all public-sector commodities: political cover. With clarity, however, comes an ability to trace lines of accountability.

The eternal quest for political cover involves the frequent resort to what is euphemistically called “omnibus legislation,” a horse-and-rabbit stew that veto proofs some mea...