Strange Bedfellows: How Television and the Presidential Candidates Changed American Politics, 1992

To dismiss this absorbing book as a post-facto account of the '92 campaign would be wrongheaded. Nor does a short description of the premise do it justice. Rosenstiel, media and politics correspondent for the Los Angeles Times , charted the campaign coverage of a single network (ABC) for an entire year. Through World News , Rosenstiel paints a group portrait of networks, newspapers, politicians and voters struggling with the profound changes of the past few years. With the incursions into political coverage by such television shows as Larry King Live and Phil Donahue and by tabloids such as the Star (witness Gennifer Flowers), the national press had to re-evaluate its sense of what the voters need to know. Most importantly, with more people getting their headlines from local media, CNN and C-Span, the mainstream national broadcast and print media increasingly saw their function as analyzing, rather than simply reporting the news. If this too often put correspondents in the role of newsmakers, it also made them savvier, even cynical, interpreters of the political manipulation that other less-seasoned media did not always recognize. The good news is: no one is really to blame. The bad news is: no one is really to blame. Rosenstiel offers a few suggestions, but his greatest success is in stripping off layers of spin-doctoring, polling, sound-biting, photo-oping and advertising to let readers determine for themselves the state of the union between press and politics. (July)