More food for thought on journ­al­ism and demo­cracy. Should people be made to watch the news?

Have a look at the con­clu­sion to this art­icle, Free Falls, High Dives, and the Future of Demo­cratic Account­ab­il­ity [pdf] by Scott Althaus.

In May of 2006 a pre­vi­ously unknown singer named Taylor Hicks was pro­pelled to national prom­in­ence when he won the hit tele­vi­sion show Amer­ican Idol. Two months later, a Zogby poll found that nearly a quarter of Amer­ic­ans could spon­tan­eously name Hicks as the most recent Amer­ican Idol. Yet the same poll found that only half as many could identify Samuel Alito as the new­est justice on the Supreme Court.

On the night of the 9/11 attacks, Nielsen Media Research found that 79.5 mil­lion viewers—nearly four in 10 Amer­ican adults—were tun­ing into any of the 11 broad­cast or cable net­works that were show­ing news cov­er­age of the attacks. As impress­ive as this level of atten­tion seems, about the same num­ber of view­ers was attrac­ted to the Janu­ary 2001 Super Bowl. Indeed, an audi­ence of this size assembles just about every year to watch the Super Bowl.

The les­son to draw from these examples is not that the Amer­ican pub­lic is stu­pid or intel­lec­tu­ally lazy. These com­par­is­ons under­score instead how polit­ic­ally alert and respons­ive the Amer­ican pub­lic could be if its interest in national and inter­na­tional news was as great as its interest in pop­u­lar cul­ture.

It is unlikely that most Amer­ic­ans had even heard of the dis­ease anthrax before late Septem­ber 2001, when sev­eral let­ters con­tain­ing anthrax spores were mailed to U.S. news organ­iz­a­tions and gov­ern­mental offices. Yet by early 2002 a national sur­vey found that nine out of 10 Amer­ic­ans not only knew some­thing about the dis­ease, but could also state cor­rectly that the inhaled form was more deadly than the kind found on the skin.

It is remark­able that this level of insight occurred at a time when only half of Amer­ic­ans also under­stood cor­rectly that anti­bi­ot­ics do not kill viruses.

When the slum­ber­ing Leviathan awakes, its sud­den capa­city for watch­ful­ness can be aston­ish­ing. The qual­ity of polit­ical rep­res­ent­a­tion in demo­cratic polit­ics could only be enhanced by wide­spread civic attent­ive­ness to pub­lic affairs.

Dif­fer­ent the­or­ies of demo­cracy envi­sion dif­fer­ent roles for cit­izens to play, with some lim­it­ing cit­izen involve­ment to par­ti­cip­at­ing in occa­sional elec­tions and oth­ers expect­ing cit­izens to delib­er­ate act­ively and fre­quently about import­ant mat­ters of pub­lic policy.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar myth, few the­or­ies of demo­cracy require any­thing like a highly­ informed cit­izenry as a pre­con­di­tion for pop­u­lar rule. But the effi­ciency and qual­ity of rep­res­ent­a­tion is likely to be enhanced under all the­or­ies of demo­cracy as cit­izens become bet­ter informed about the actions of their elec­ted rep­res­ent­at­ives and the import­ant pub­lic issues con­front­ing the nation.

The more we learn about polit­ics, the closer our polit­ical pref­er­ences should come to resemble our polit­ical interests, and the greater the chance that our votes and voices will as a con­sequence prop­erly reward our polit­ical lead­ers for what they have done, or pun­ish them for what they left undone.

It is the qual­ity of pop­u­lar judg­ment under­ly­ing this vital account­ab­il­ity func­tion that is threatened by wan­ing levels of interest in pub­lic affairs and the ensu­ing under­sup­ply of polit­ic­ally inform­at­ive news cov­er­age to the attent­ive audi­ence that remains.

The less atten­tion the pub­lic routinely pays to the news, the greater the chance that voters will get it wrong on elec­tion day by reward­ing irre­spons­ible lead­er­ship and bestow­ing pun­ish­ments on those whose sober and judi­cious views should have rightly car­ried the day.

The whole thing is well worth a read, and you can see more of Althaus’ work here.