The elephant in the room: Craig Crawford takes aim at the war against the media but missed the biggest target.

• Author: Sullivan, Margaret

Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media By Craig Crawford Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, $22.95

From Middle America's point of view, the conflict between the media and politicians is like a vicious dogfight with a mangy pit bull on one side and a snarling Doberman on the other. The average person's assessment might be this: a pox on both their kennels.

But Craig Crawford begs to disagree with any such dismissiveness. A columnist for Congressional Quarterly and a familiar TV talking head, Crawford has gone a few rounds in the ring himself. In his first book, Attack the Messenger, he makes the case that every American should be concerned about the eviscerated state of the press following the fabrication/plagiarism scandals at top newspapers, the Dan Rather debacle at CBS, and the government's latest attacks on journalists and their confidential sources. (He might have a slightly different view in this post-Katrina era, given that the press has raised its bloodied head off the mat, at least momentarily.) As he sees it, the victory of politicians over the press is not only clear, but also deeply alarming. American democracy, Crawford argues, depends on a viable press: one that not only aggressively pursues the truth, but is also believed and trusted by the public.

Politicians have triumphed in recent years, Crawford goes on, by turning the tables on the traditional questioners and attackers and making the foibles of journalists into the issue, thereby deflecting any blame that might fall upon themselves. Their weapon of choice? The public's growing distrust of the media, wielded like a cudgel.

Crawford has taken on a worthy subject here--and a big one. The problem is, he's written a small book. Not just in size, though the volume is nearly as thin as Michael Brown's list of disaster relief credentials, but also in vision, and, most of all, in depth. This dashed-off treatment seems more like the overblown draft of a long magazine piece than a fully realized book. But a book it was to be, and toward that end, the 160 pages of Attack the Messenger are padded--none-too-subtly--with such things as the nasty emails Crawford has received from readers and an off-the-point chapter on how news consumers can go about getting the "real story" from media sources.

Worse, Crawford delivers familiar ideas as if they were profound discoveries. "The major news organizations are under siege," he says breathlessly, "[t]hey've been...