Good Intentions Make Bad News: Why Americans Hate Campaign Journalism

Good Intentions Make Bad News outlines how campaign journalism has evolved during the last twenty-five years, concluding that media partisanship plays a disproportionate role in determining electoral outcomes. S. Robert Lichter and Richard Noyes, experts in the relationship between mass communications and the political process, argue that unbalanced media coverage obscures the issues most relevant to constituents while it dramatically limits the range of legitimate political debate. The authors discuss the significance of alternative forms of political communication and provide suggestions for the 1996 elections. This in-depth study is sure to be a provocative and controversial book for scholars of political science, campaign strategy, presidential politics, and mass communications.

S. Robert Lichter is the co-author of When Should the Watchdogs Bark? Media Coverage of the Clinton Scandals and Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left. He is co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., and is a visiting professor of Government at Georgetown University. Richard Noyes is the Political Studies Director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs.