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.