News on politics today is in a profound state of flux. On the one hand, new media have enabled innovative journalistic practices. Joseph Pulitzer transformed news from a dull institutional format to a multistage drama featuring characters and conflict. Our study...

The press and the government have become entangled in a symbiotic web of manipulation, mythmaking, and self-aggrandizing deceit. Journalists demand drama and conflict, and officials manufacture crises to serve their own interests.In this environment where perceptions...