Congress, the News Media, and the Entertainment Media

• New Washington press corps
• Decline of local-paper bureaus
• Consquences of the new media environment

The cautionary tale of Kurt Bardella:

• From Bardella himself: [R]eporters e-mail me saying, “Hey, I’m writing this story on this thing. Do you think you guys might want to investigate it? If so, if you get some documents, can you give them to me?” I’m, like, “You guys are going to write that we’re the ones wanting to do all the investigating, but you guys are literally the ones trying to egg us on to do that!”
• "This is a place that, for better or worse, does recognize self-promotion," Bardella said. "It's about winning the daily news cycle and learning to navigate the new media world. Your priorities do become a little distorted, and you lose sight of who you are rather than what you're trying to portray."
• “Kurt has had danger signs,” said a House Republican aide who refused to be named to avoid dragging other members into the storm. “If you had said, ‘X press secretary did this,’ Kurt would have been eight out of 10 people’s guess.”

The great political movie of them all -- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) -- had a screenplay by a Communist. No joke.



Advise and Consent (1962) had echoes of the Hiss-Chambers case.




The real-life hearing:

The hearing in The Godfather II

In The Candidate, Robert Redford depicted a senatorial candidate showing fatigue:

In 1998, so did Warren Beatty in Bulworth: