What Do We Need to Know?
Is there a link between legacy journalism and democracy?
As someone who often participates in conversations about the challenges today facing journalism today I sometimes wonder whether we’re asking the wrong question. Perhaps our focus should be on whether Americans are getting the information they need rather than on whether the money-losing Washington Post is shrinking or whether declining network television is controlled by a new cast of corporate owners with a questionable political agenda.
It is easy to list the disruptive changes ongoing in the media world. Pew and Poynter both do commendable jobs there. But that doesn’t test the claim that democracy dies in darkness and that robust newspaper competition in our cities is a prerequisite fo responsive and effective government.
My basic question is whether people are getting the information they need to make good decisions. I wish I knew. Despite my status as a curmudgeon, I’m unconvinced that my kids and grandkids, a limited but readily available sample, know less than they need or than we did in the last century. I’m unconvinced that our grandparents who got morning and evening newspapers were better informed or made better decisions than we do.
And I strongly reject the self-serving argument that voters make bad decisions because the media fails to report adequately about candidates
What people need to know to create a society they’re comfortable in is a tough question. We’re regularly treated to research purportedly showing that people don’t understand compound interest, don’t know the strengths and weaknesses of nuclear power or who presides over the political system in Brazil or Borneo. But I’m unconvinced that an engaged citizen needs to know these things. Isn’t that what the internet is for?
My impression is that John Dewey argued that informed citizens understood the rules of their society even as they discussed how some of them may seem outdated, flawed or inviting of reform. Which is to say knowing that the Constitution protects press freedom and gun ownership without committing any of us personally to endorse those ideas. And acknowledging that the Supreme Court is the umpire making decisions that demand respect irrespective of how much we may disagree with them.
One is free to argue that America should be a Christian country – I wouldn’t – but it is wrong to argue that this is a constitutional requirement.
When Dewey and the progressives first made the argument about the need for an educated citizenry, science got more respect than it got now. Sen. Patrick Moynihan’s subsequent construct that “you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts” once seemed to make more sense.
But the issues of our day increasingly involve the science of probabilities where there’s often an honest debate about what facts are most relevant.. Increasingly the answer to a basic question like “Is fracking good or bad” is correctly “maybe.”
This confusion in dealing with complexity creates an environment where the public is less willing to put aside their personal concerns to accept expert policies designed to best serve most of the people most of the time. Acceptance of risk is not what it once was.
Things don’t get any better troublemaking provocateurs have amplified doubts about science to even broader questions like who won the Presidency in 2020. So we increasingly find ourselves in an environment where everyone thinks they are entitled to their own facts.
This is not a new problem, I can track it back at least to World War I and Walter Lippman’s subsequent writings when he argued for a respected expert panel to help civilians separate the wheat from the chaff. It was an idea that failed to win wide popularity beyond the elite then and hasn’t gained credibility since.
I’d like to believe that the press can play a role in rebuilding confidence in our political institutions, but that remains no more than a theory from my perspective. It has certainly promoted distrust– often deserved – and cynicism