It’s not hard to get political reporters started on how pols and their flaks deny the press access, feed us talking points and, in some cases, flat-out lie. But every story has two sides (or a few), so in fair journalistic tradition, we asked a handful of outspoken politicians to critique the political press corps and tell us exactly what their beef is with the fourth estate. Does the relationship between politicians and the press need to be so confrontational? And when are reporters in the wrong? Here are four takes, from politicians who know the media’s spotlight well.

Interviews by Elizabeth F. Ralph and Margaret Slattery


Illustrations by Hanoch Piven

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Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont

“The press is still free and is still able to bring up issues that nobody else is willing to bring up. In their core role, they still do what they have to do. But in terms of educating the public, their credibility has gone way down. The press is one of the failed institutions in American democracy, along with Wall Street and Congress. Today, I think it’s much more gotcha questions, much less substance, much more interest in the gossipy—and more getting it first, not getting it right. The inside-the-Beltway press is just the worst. There’s too much reliance on unnamed sources, which are unreliable and can’t be evaluated by the reader. And the willingness to engage in pack journalism is just appalling. My advice to the press is to remember that you’re an important part of government and democracy, and act like it. You can’t blame Hillary or Obama for going into the foxhole or managing the press—which drives them crazy. The reason they have a bad relationship with the press is that the press asks for it.”

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Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House

“The media today is driven by numbers. If you get a congressman idiotic enough to take pictures of himself and tweet them out, that gets 600 times more coverage than the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Also, the media has a passion for fights. There’ll be this unending effort to find where you disagree on part 72D, rather than where you agree. Self-government is the hardest thing humans do other than fight a civil war. To do it well is almost a miracle. The old reporters knew a lot about what politicians do. In the modern era, much of the press doesn’t have historical knowledge or spend much time reading. We’ve gotten into this adversarial model, where one side is leopards, the other side is baboons—you can’t possibly move around each other. Ask yourself, ‘If I were a congressman or candidate or senator or whatever, how would I feel and what would I do?’ This will be a goofy analogy, but in a sense we need a little more Downton Abbey and a little less House of Cards.”

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Michele Bachmann, former U.S. congresswoman from Minnesota

“Sometimes it’s true—reporters truly holding high journalistic standards. I wish that’s what reporters would do, hold politicians accountable and inform the public. But when it comes to Obama, the media forms a protective bubble and would never pound him for his domestic and foreign policy failures the way they do for a conservative. I’ve seen the same bias in my own career. During my last term in Congress, I wrote a letter—together with four other congressmen—to inspectors general, asking questions about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood within the U.S. government. There was an unrestrained effort in the media to portray me as anti-Muslim and hate-filled. As members of Congress, my fellow members and I were doing our job in oversight. We were not hurling unsubstantiated charges; we simply asked questions. The mainstream media is, in a broad brushstroke way, disrespectfully lazy. They don’t do their work to understand a story.”

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Barney Frank, former U.S. congressman from Massachusetts

“When I first entered office, there was a healthy skepticism, but you were as likely to get positive as negative news. Some people say it had to do with Vietnam and Watergate, when people like Woodward and Bernstein made these great reputations by writing about bad stuff, but over time I think the press has developed a serious bias towards negativism. I get asked, ‘What do you think about X or Y?’ If my evaluation is positive, I’m then asked, ‘Well, what don’t you like?’ And that’s likely to be in the paper. If my evaluation is negative, I am never asked, ‘Is there anything good about it?’ We have two forms of voter suppression in America: The kind where Republicans adopt laws that make it very hard for people physically to vote. We also have intellectual voter suppression from some of my friends on the left, who say, ‘These politicians don’t pay any attention to you. They’re only interested in big money.’ If people believe that, why would they vote? The press does that, too. If people think nothing good ever happens, the incentive to vote is diminished.”