Making Laws and Making News: Media Strategies in the U.S. House of Representatives

The news media, especially television, have become a fixture on Capitol Hill in the past twenty years. Making Laws and Making News describes the interactive relationship between the press and Congress that strongly affects the news, the legislative process, and the types of laws enacted. Instead of focusing on how reporters decide who and what to cover and how news is resented, Cook examines the other side of the equation--the relationship between the media strategies of House members press offices and the legislative strategies of the members themselves. The book won the 1990 Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing.