How Does Media Affect Our Perceptions of Congress? (with Rob Oldham)

Understanding Congress

The topic of this episode is, “How does media affect our perceptions of Congress?’

As listeners no doubt know, Americans are down on Congress. Public approval of Congress has averaged about 20 percent over the past 20 years, according to Gallup. Certainly, the people on Capitol Hill are partly to blame. We have legislators who behave as if they are on a reality television show and who spend a lot of time starting fights on social media. Congress also has hurt its reputation by failing to address major public policy issues, like immigration and the soaring national debt. And then there are the occasional scandals that disgust the average American.

Yet, Americans’ dour opinion of Congress also is fueled by media coverage.

To talk more about this I have with me Rob Oldham, who is a Ph.D. candidate in politics at Princeton University. This year he will be an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, and will be spending a lot of time on Capitol Hill. His published papers investigate the relationship between supermajority rules and bipartisan policymaking. His dissertation considers congressional policymaking in response to crises during the era of polarization.

And importantly and especially relevant for this podcast is that Rob is the coauthor (along with James M. Curry and Frances Lee) of a fascinating, recent article titled, “On the Congress Beat: How the Structure of News Shapes Coverage of Congressional Action.” This article was recently published by Political Science Quarterly.