It started with the Gary Hart scandal. Guy was cheating on his wife, which had no impact on his ability to govern, he was stalked by reporters in order to break the irrelevant but salacious story and sell newspapers. Ended his career for all intents and purposes. And in the process created a media environment where actual effective handling of the job of governing takes a back seat to pandering to the constituency's emotions while trying to paint the opponent as unfit for office because his dog got its shots a week late. All the Truth is Out, The Republican Noise Machine and Shock Doctrine paint a pretty nihilistic portrait of media and politics at the present if you want to read them and draw connections between three different books that are loosely related by topic.