Media Coverage of Congress in the 1990s: Scandals,Personalities, and the Prevalence of Policy and Process

In this article, we provide a comprehensive, systematic examination of media coverage of Congress in the 1990s. Specifically, we content analyze over 2,600 congressional news stories from the New York Times and CBS Evening News from 1990 through 1998. We find that the news media covered substantive policy concerns and the legislative process quite regularly and that stories focusing on individual personalities and political scandals were comparatively infrequent. We also find that legislative maneuvering is a mainstay of congressional media coverage, and the democratic process is most often framed as conflict between parties and Congress and the president.