Hard News and the Future of Democracy
“We’re not heading toward a dystopian future in which no one produces hard news,” concludes Tim Lee in a post I basically agree with.
Something important to keep straight in this kind of conversation is the difference between the interests of hard news reporters (which I think are and will continue to be, adversely effected by digitization) and the putative concern for the “health of our democracy” as expressed by the ability of the news business to generate an informed citizenry. In this case we’re not worried about a dystopian future in which no one produces hard news, we’re worried about a future in which no one consumes hard news.
I think this looks like a mixed bag. The basic reality of the matter is that we already live in a society where the voters are almost completely ignorant of everything they need to know to be functioning members of a democratic public. People can’t name the elected officials who represent them, and in general seem to have very little interest in politics. The good news, I think, is that thanks to the internet you can at least look this stuff up. If you’re curious, you can use Google and figure out who represents you in the State Senate and find out a thing or two about what he’s up to. Dutifully receiving your daily gigantic bundle of newsprint and then ignoring the stories about state government might make the guy who writes the stories about state government feel better, but it doesn’t actually provide you with information.
32 Responses to “Hard News and the Future of Democracy”
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July 3rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
The point is sound, but “almost completely ignorant of everything” etc. is unwarranted overstatement. How about “not nearly knowledgeable enough”? That makes the same point and isn’t empirically false.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:41 am
In this case we’re not worried about a dystopian future in which no one produces hard news, we’re worried about a future in which no one consumes hard news.
No, we’re worried about a future in which no one produces hard news. Look at Iraq: very few newspapers still have a reporter there. And if you think it doesn’t matter because people just don’t care, look at the last elections: eventually the fact that it was/is a disaster trickled down into common wisdom, despite intense propaganda by the previous administration.
Bloggers don’t make hard news. Which blogger has the kind of sources available to a Sy Hersh or a Charlie Savage? Investigative journalists need real money and time, something bloggers don’t have.
The NY Times and Washington Post may not be around forever in their current forms, there’s nothing to replace them. And at the local level, it already happened. People might not care about some policy debates, but they would like to know if their mayor is a crook or a liar.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:50 am
Unless the Mayor is caught with cash in his refrigerator, or in bed with proverbial dead girl/live boy, you can’t necessarily know if (s)he is a crook unless you have some grounding in policy. This tendency to make politics about personalities is part of the general dumbing down that lets sharp operators run the table while the rubes scratch their heads wondering why they always lose.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
As an American living in Spain, it always strikes me as absurd when people here say that Spaniards have more access to information than Americans. The reality of the situation is that Americans have FAR MORE access to information than Spaniards because internet access is much higher in America than in Spain (or in all Spanish-speaking countries for that matter; if you don’t believe me look at the VAST difference in Wikipedia articles in English and in Spanish despite the relatively small difference in the languages’ respective native speakers: http://www.wikipedia.org/)
The real issue is of course to what extent a sufficient majority of the population informs itself and in that respect I honestly don’t know which country is worse. The remarkably bad education systems in both countries give the majority of citizens little reason to get enthusiastic about democracy.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
@1: Nope, sorry, Matt got it right without hyperbole. The voters are almost completely ignorant of everything they need to know.
They pay a great deal of attention to a presidential election — where they think they’re voting for a domestic agenda, not understanding the real nature of the President’s powers. Meanwhile, they pay much less attention to the legislative offices that actually define the domestic agenda, and next to no attention to local races that affect them most directly. In all of these races, they strive to make decisions based on “character,” failing to understand that a) this is the easiest part of the picture to manipulate and b) in party politics individual “character” is often irrelevant.
In the meantime, cable news focuses their attention on horserace questions and hot-button issues that are more about lifestyle choice than public policy.
I’m not even touching on their ignorance of e.g. the Constitution.
I’m constantly amazed that we’re governed as well as we are.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:13 am
Scott,
That’s not an ideal comparison between English and Spanish speaking countries. Most _native_ English speakers live in developed countries, while most _native_ Spanish speakers live in developing or middle-income ones. Of course there are going to be more internet users speaking English. (Plus the fact that many more people speak English as a _second_ language than Spanish; native speakers aren’t really the issue here). It doesn’t mean that that Spanish speakers are any less interested in learning about the world or whatever. Plus the fact that a great deal of Wikipedia is devoted to celebrity ‘news’ and other intellectual fluff.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
As someone who has been practicing citizen journalism for three months now (glorified blogger for examiner.com) I have some thoughts:
By focusing on one core area of interest, it really has informed my writing (there are some who would violently disagree). My brief interlude as a beat reporter in the past left me scratching my head, knowing I was missing back story but not having time to get up to speed. I have learned a tremendous amount during the past three months.
I have broken hard news on a national level. Sources have come to me. There’s no law against bloggers doing actual reporting, and I have actually ventured outside the kitchen to do some. Nonetheless, I am really happy there are still beat reporters I can leach off of.
I have now generated an archive of 100 articles on global warming that adds to the historical (or hysterical, depending on your opinion of my opinion) record on this subject. A beat reporter’s record would be too diffuse to be of searchable value by reporter’s name.
Seems like everything else on the Internet–like Giap’s opinion of the French Revolution, it’s too early to tell. There’s good and bad in what’s going on, and good and bad in the potential for the future. But it’s fun to be in the middle of it all.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
I think the concern is more at a civic level. I don’t doubt there will still be major media institutions looking critically at the federal government, but if the Rocky Mountain News is gone, who has the institutional muscle to uncover, say, police corruption in Denver?
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Regarding the degree of the public interest in and knowledge of political issues and information:
I don’t know of any definitive evidence or studies, but my impression since coming of age (political awareness-wise) in the early 60’s is that the extent of awareness has diminished and folks’ attention has become more focused on peripheral issues (the “horse race”) and on the ‘noise,’ with diminishing awareness of the important aspects of awareness.
If one has the opportunity to view the Nixon Kennedy debates (see, e.g., this archive) I believe he difference in tone and substance is a striking example of the changes.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am
“(Plus the fact that many more people speak English as a _second_ language than Spanish; native speakers aren’t really the issue here).”
Au contraire, native speakers are very much the issue here. As an avid Wikipedia-user, it’s pretty clear most English articles are written by native speakers of English.
“It doesn’t mean that that Spanish speakers are any less interested in learning about the world or whatever.”
I never said that. All I said was that internet access is more widely available in English-speaking countries than in Spanish-speaking countries which merely allows more academically-curious English-speakers than Spanish-speakers to edit and access Wikipedia. Remember, I’m only concerned with ACCESS to information, not how people use information.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:34 am
Give me a break, Ted. “Need” by whose definition? And also, compared to whom? I think it would be very difficult to prove that US citizens are notably less informed than the citizens of other western democracies, and if that’s the case, the statement is meaningless (we also don’t jump high enough to grab coconuts from treetops, but nobody recognizes this as a valid deficit). And no, you can’t use voting rates to establish political ignorance.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
The truth is, when people make assertions like this, without data, it ends up sounding like “blah blah blah blah people are ignorant blah blah blah sheep blah I’m smart blah blah.” Ted and Matt may be thoughtful people with deep and wise views about the levels of political informedness in our electorate, but that’s not what you’re transmitting when you mouth off about it.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:46 am
As the U.S. becomes a one party state where few if any elections are competative, does it really matter taht people know little about the elections. Voting on race, class, gender, or ethnicity will be the most important parts of elections instead of policy issues.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
I believe that voter ignorance has been a key objective of the right for many years.
They have spent a lot of money to move major media to the right and to assure that people like Phil Donohue disappear, while horserace jerks like Chris Matthews survive.
They also strive to ensure that the media is filled with their mouthpieces like Krauthammer, Brooks, etc. And that those types determine the content and frame of the conversation. And I’m not so sure that liberal blogs don’t often aid their cause by quoting the rightwingers.
If the major newspaper columnists had been truthfully discussing single-payer health insurance the last 30 years, we would probably have a different situation now.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:08 pm
@Martin: well, I absolutely was mouthing off in a lively, theatrically arrogant fashion, without supporting my claims with data, so I totally deserved that.
But I will say that the “comparative” thing seems like a red herring to me.
MY and I aren’t claiming that Americans are dumber than anyone else. We’re just saying that most voters don’t know what they would need to know, in order to make an informed decision. When 60% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can’t locate Iraq on a map, and 48% can’t locate Mississippi, it’s a reasonable hypothesis that they’re not paying close attention to legislative procedure either. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12591413/) And, though I can’t imagine a world where we harvest coconuts by jumping, I think I really can imagine a world where people spend a bit more time thinking about policy and a bit less about Michael Jackson.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
As a former newspaper reporter (sports) of many years standing, I think Matt is missing one of the strengths of the traditional newspaper, even in its Web version-it presents information people might find of value without them needing to search for it.
If people don’t know the Mayor’s a crook, they are unlikely to Google for that knowledge. But when it’s on the front page, they must deal with it, even if it’s to discount the information.
Newspapers are content aggregators presenting a wide if necessarily shallow field of information. Making the individual do that themselves online, EVEN IF IT’S EASY, is going to result in many individuals not doing it.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Ted, I admire your humorous attitude, and I am pleased to be discussing this with you. The comparative thing matters a lot, because if no society has ever achieved similar levels of political awareness (and none has), it renders your opinions about what people ought to be doing with their time moot.
That’s why it would be like complaining that Americans (say) don’t jump high enough — again, compared to what? We jump as high as we are able — and it’s not that different with knowledge of the political world. Is the average German farmer well-informed about Iraq? Or Kansas? I highly doubt it, but your frame implies that he or she is. Where are these people who are as politically informed as they “need”?
The non-existence of a comparable group of people with advanced levels of political sophistication cannot by any definition be a red herring.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
@Martin:
“Given a choice of three options, just 24% of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29%) believe the proposal has something to do with regulating Wall Street while 17% think the term applies to health care reform. A plurality (30%) have no idea.” (Rasmussen)
Point for Yglesias.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
This is empirically false. They want to know if someone seems like a crook or a liar, but they’re actually quiet hostile to suggestions that the politicians they’ve already decided they like are actually liars or crooks.
Re: Bush, George W.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Well, I don’t have the patience to Google comparative info about levels of civic education in Europe. It doesn’t matter much to me, because I would be willing to concede that you’re right about the factual question — that no society has achieved the level of information that MY is saying we “need.”
Bur I still feel that argument is (ultimately) a red herring because I am absolutely comfortable suggesting that human beings *need* to do things we haven’t yet done. E.g., I bet we’ve never solved an economic tragedy-of-the-commons of the magnitude posed by global warming. But we do need to solve it, and we’re going to have to solve it, and the fact that we haven’t done so before just means that it’s going to be effing difficult.
Same thing with democracy. You could say “we’re no dumber than we used to be, this is just a ‘crisis of rising expectations’.” My answer would be: maybe, but rising expectations are a good thing. We do *need* to be better than we are.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
According to Pew’s News IQ survey, 22% of Americans think that Nicolas Sarkozy is the President of Russia. Also, in the Feb/March 2008 survey, 76% of Americans didn’t know that Harry Reid is Senate Majority Leader.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H.L. Mencken
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Bravo Ned!!
Given the complete ignorance of the general public regarding all things political and public policy, I find it incredibly amusing that liberals consistently cite polls of these ignorant people as somehow providing support for their side. “Polls show 65% of voters want a public option” says a liberal, therefore we should have one.
Wrong!! Since people don’t know squat about these issues, who cares what they think about anything. That’s why liberals are always disappointed when the polls change as the negative consequences of their proposals become known and they have no other reason to justify the changes they want to make.
The same thing will happen with the incredible stupid energy bill. Polls showing “public approval” of cap-and-trade now will melt away faster than puddles in Phoenix in the summertime when the costs of the bill to the average American becomes more generally known.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
This is empirically false. They want to know if someone seems like a crook or a liar, but they’re actually quiet hostile to suggestions that the politicians they’ve already decided they like are actually liars or crooks.
Re: Bush, George W.
What about W? As far as I remember his approval ratings fell steadily after 2003, he barely got re-elected, and he finished his second term very unpopular.
So a lot of people liked Bush, but after Katrina and the Iraq mess they decided he was a liar.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
According to Pew’s News IQ survey, 22% of Americans think that Nicolas Sarkozy is the President of Russia.
Honestly, who cares. The name of the President of Russia doesn’t matter (or at least not more than any other fact), especially not to decide who you’re going to vote for.
Also, in the Feb/March 2008 survey, 76% of Americans didn’t know that Harry Reid is Senate Majority Leader.
Again, doesn’t matter. I bet even Harry Reid’s wife doesn’t know he is Senate Majority Leader; he sure doesn’t act like one.
Instead of looking for the most ridiculous answers, you could have noticed:
- 82% know Democrats control the House
- 87% know Clinton is secretary of state
- 76% know Guantanamo is a US base
- 72% know Pelosi is speaker <– take that, Reid
- 64% know tax on gasoline is lower in the US than in Western Europe (impressively wonkish)
In fact, the two questions you picked are the ones with the worst answers. This poll in fact shows that Americans are better informed than you think.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Re: Au contraire, native speakers are very much the issue here. As an avid Wikipedia-user, it’s pretty clear most English articles are written by native speakers of English.
Scott,
Perhaps, but don’t you think that if some student in Nigeria wants to look stuff up on Wikipedia he’s going to do it in English and not in, say, Hausa?
For better or worse, English is the lingua franca of the world today (particularly in scholrly contexts) and so of course there is going to be a lot more text (internet, journals and books) published in English than in any other language by a long shot, regardless of the number of native speakers.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
That’s all fine, but all of these factoids about ignorant Americans seem driven more by the need to feel superior to someone rather than any civic concern. Which strikes me as a fairly unappealing starting point. But hey, your call.
As for Ted: Yes, that’s fair — if you invoke rising expectations then I have no choice but to concede that you are not making the statements without an understanding of the context.
I would still challenge the word “need,” though. We need to govern as well as we can, and we’re doing that, more or less. From this distance it sounds a bit like the people here want the people to get better informed so that they will adopt an informed, liberal perspective…. frankly that kind of certitude is just a stone’s throw away “you have been deemed too ignorant to vote.”
Indeed, this thread is rife with that perspective, and it’s a losing proposition any way you cut it. I may be soft on enforcing intellectual standards or scolding my fellow countrymen, but the people here are a little soft on democracy (as far as I can tell).
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I just realized that I don’t know who my state assemblyman and state senator are (and why do I need two separate state legislators anyway?). I looked it up once, and the districts were so gerrymandered that it was hard to tell which side of the line I lived on. I know I can leave my apartment, cross the street, and be in another state assembly and state legislative district but I’ve forgotten who these districts “elect”.
Note that I live in Manhattan, and the grip of one party machine politics (in this case Democratic, Republican in other parts of the state) is so strong that if I did know who my state senator and state assemblyman was, there is nothing I could do with the information.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Adding to the above, we are approaching the situation in the Roman Empire where Tiberius transferred the election of the magistrates from the people to the Senate and no one missed it or cared.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
THE RED HERRING!
(A Beautiful Dream)
In the best-case scenario, Russian diplomats see Obama’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons as a beautiful dream, as Yuli Kvitsinsky, a former Soviet ambassador to West Germany and an experienced disarmament expert puts it. If anything, it’s seen as a trap to further weaken Russia’s influence in the world. (Source: Russian Mistrust Overshadows Obama’s Moscow Visit, by Uwe Klussmann and Matthias Schepp in Moscow, (WWW1.SPIEGEL.DE).
To counter the Empire, groups of nations are in fact and have in fact clustered into (Sphere of Influence) to protect their sovereignty, resources, and fair market enterprise within the greater global community. The Empire has made it imperative that weaker nations either spend a large portion of their own (GDP’s) Gross Domestic Products upon expensive Nuclear Weapon, and Delivery System development or align themselves with in and under a protective umbrella with a country or set of countries that have an Thermo-Nuclear umbrella. Even South America is seeking protection under one of the (BRIC), Geo-Spheres of Influence, with Venezuela asking the Russian Federation to base its newest Nuclear Capable Aircraft on its soil much as the Cubans having Nuclear Weapons have kept the Empire at arms length to that Sovereign Island Nation. The dream of a Thermo-Nuclear free world will never be achieved as long as the Empire exists, and the policy of Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strikes to secure resources and market are the Empire policy.
(Milking the Cow)
The Russian People are at heart a trusting peoples, having the unfortunate tendency to put a present out on the table whenever they get a senior guest or visitor from any country, and with the Empire the gift given in return by the Empire was Color Revolutions, (NATO) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, encroachment upon its Sphere’s of Geo-Influence, and a one side nuclear disarmament, with talks of the reduction of number of nuclear warheads for long-range missiles to (1K) One-Thousand, which all sounds pretty much like it is happening with the Empire, think again. The Russian Federation when it talks of reduction it means just that the weapons are DESTROYED, when the Empire speaks of reduction it means DISMANTLE AND STORE, they simple remove them from immediate use, in an out of storage use position. Its something like going into a store and looking for a product and the store manger says they no longer carry or stock the item, and one of those that do not have the product on the shelf but in the back room, not taking up immediate shelf space but still for sale and available. The question that The Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev, should ask himself is just how many times do you let your Cow be Milked for nothing before, you figure you have been hood winked, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and its shame on me.
(The Topol-M)
The concept that the new Topol-M Inter-Continental Missile System, or SS-300, to Iran, should be cut back or limited is short sighted thinking, when dealing with the Empire its Dismantle and Store Nuclear Disarmament , Trident Submarines at their highest patrol levels since their original deployment, and the concept of being heavily outgunned by the Empire terms of conventional weapons is a red herring, a false conception, given the current economic situation the concept of, To Big To Fail, means nothing, through out history the weaker forces have defeated much larger forces. The short term pain of costs estimated at (€2.5 billion) Two-Point-Five Billion Euros, is worth the price in the long term for the (BRIC) Russian Federation Sphere of Influence to maintain the sovereignty, resources, and markets, not only of its own STATE, buy those dependent upon and under its umbrella of protection. No arrangement is can be made concerning the development of or deployment of a Missile Defense Shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, by the Empire or in partnership with the New Russian Federation, that is unless the same missile defense arrangement is made concerning Brazil, Cuba or Venezuela, Quid Per Quo.
(RECOMMENDED READING):
(1) Russian Mistrust Overshadows Obama’s Moscow Visit, by Uwe Klussmann and Matthias Schepp in Moscow, (WWW1.SPIEGEL.DE).
(2) ANY news sources OTHER THAN those of THE EMPIRE.
TRIATHLON
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
The simple fact is that blogging and the web have put us in an entirely different relationship to knowledge.
Fifty years ago there was a lot you could never learn- and you certainly couldn’t learn it from your daily paper, or Time magazine. Newspapers were, if anything, more likely to cover up the corruption in City Hall than to expose it.
Or take the idea that the Kennedy-Nixon debates were high-minded. Nixon was a smear artist and red-baiter, and Kennedy went at him with a fictional ‘missile gap’. The people who voted for or against Kennedy’s Catholicism almost seem rational in comparison.
Bloggers today are trying to figure out how society deals with thousands of real-time factual inputs. To the extent that newspapers and ‘media’ did that well in the past, they will probably keep doing it.
But the fact is they never did it that well. Today on the net you can see a statement, double or triple check it, look up background information, and ponder what it means- quite literally in minutes. In the old days you never even saw the statement.
There will be no going back to the time when newspapers did hard reporting because that time didn’t exist. Younger readers like to imagine a time when there were principled conservatives, hard-hitting newspapers, and David Broder had not yet become a senile mugwump- but there never was a time like that. Sad to say, in those categories, today is as good as it’s ever been.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 pm
What I see is the simple idea of the replacement of a huge number of men in the economy. The economy that absorbed so any women from the 70’s until now was, at first productive, then a voodoo economy. Now that the voodoo is coming out in the wash, capitalism in the US really does not need so many workers in the jobs people want — i.e. the better paying ones. Women are perceived, unfairly or not, as more manageable, less volatile and demanding (of money and other stuff) than men —more willing to work for others. The cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris — a cultural materialist (aka an American style Marxist) predicted this would be the outcome of bringing millions of highly educated and trained women into the capitalist job-sector of the work force. JOBS and income will be the greatest issues going forward. Mind you I am not saying this is women’s fault or that they should go back into the home — not at all. Just noting that new millennium capitalism has a severe over-supply of labor. I think we will see creative developments on the way in job sharing, social nets (like national health care) and taxation clauses designed to level the playing field a bit when you have two full time bread winners working versus those who are sharing jobs. It could be the start of a new positive era where everyone does not have to work themselves to the bone for the basics or a good live.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I think there is another aspect of news that affects this. Lack of voter knowledge isn’t just from fewer investigative reporters or weakened venues for getting hard news. The amount of disinformation which potential voters deal with has skyrocketed.
When you just got your news from the paper or Walter Cronkite, you didn’t get a lot of intentionally misleading news stories. Now, you have propaganda channels programmed to please different viewing demographics, paid shills who are interviewed as subject matter experts and all sorts of garbage.