ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the well-known disjuncture between the public's generally positive perceptions of its individual congressional representatives and its quite negative perceptions of Congress as a collective. People may go about judging their own representative in a way that makes direct use of their perceptions of what other representatives are like. The chapter discusses the evidence pertaining to the role of perceptual biases and of information sources in altering levels of public esteem for Congress and its members. It also illuminates how members of Congress from districts with different kinds of media environments face quite different challenges in cultivating constituent support. In short, journalists in smaller communities are more reluctant to cover ostensibly "bad news" about their community, and this same attitude extends to coverage of their congressional representatives. The public may dislike hearing about endless conflict among members of Congress, but for journalists the drama is the stuff of good news stories.
