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When asked by a Time magazine reporter to identify the most underplayed story of our times, former news anchor Walter Cronkite replied, “Congress. This is where our laws are made, where our laws are debated, and we don’t cover Congress the way it ought to be.”“10 Questions for Walter Cronkite,” Time, November 3, 2003, 8.
Cronkite’s observation speaks to the changing relations between the national press and Congress over time. For the first century of the republic, Congress and its members were far more visible in newspapers than presidents, who felt it was beneath the dignity of the office to speak on public issues. Debates on Capitol Hill were widely reprinted in partisan papers. The profit-minded penny press of the 1830s found Washington news attractive but often focused on members’ personal escapades, which raised the ire and suspicion of congressmen. Congress adopted the practice of reviewing reporters’ credentials, granting them permission to sit in the drafty public gallery on a case-by-case basis. When the Capitol was rebuilt in the 1850s, the construction included press galleries, separate areas to which reporters were automatically admitted on the recommendation of their editors.
By the 1920s, the president made most of the news; Congress was relegated to a distant second place, and the Supreme Court received the least press.Timothy E. Cook, Making Laws & Making News (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1989). The modern relationship between the media and Congress took shape in the 1970s, when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the story about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the behest of the Nixon White House to uncover Democrats’ campaign strategies. Hundreds of reporters were sent to Washington to cover the Watergate scandal, and many stayed after discovering that the town was ripe with stories. The Watergate scandal prompted Congress to pass sunshine laws, which opened most hearings to the public and the press. Many members welcomed the opportunity offered by the invigorated Washington press corps to promote themselves to their constituents.
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