Here's an interesting quick read that's a pretty scathing criticism of the current state of political journalism. It does a very good job of putting into words one of the reasons I can't stand those jerk-off talking heads on the cable news networks.
When journalists define politics as a game played by the insiders, their job description becomes: find out what the insiders are doing to "win" the game. Reveal those tactics to the public because then the public can... well, this is where it gets dodgy. As my friend Todd Gitlin once wrote, news coverage that treats politics as an insiders' game invites the public to become "cognoscenti of their own bamboozlement."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/08/what-if-journalists-stopped-trying-to-be-political-insiders/244167/