DEMOCRACY AND THE NEWS

DEMOCRACY AND THE NEWS. By Herbert J. Gans. Oxford Univ. Press. 168 pp. $26

American newspapers, much as we love to complain about them, are thicker, richer, and more conscientiously factual than their counterparts elsewhere. Most of the largest European dailies would kill for a newsroom the size of, say, The San Francisco Chronicle’s, and few could even imagine a world of 21 percent profit margins—the U.S. industry average, even during the recessionary doldrums of 2002.

Despite these achievements, Columbia University sociologist Herbert Gans worries that American newspapers have degenerated to the point that they may require taxpayer subsidies. The author of Deciding What’s News (1979) and other works, Gans believes that the American dream has foundered, and that journalism is at or near the root of the problem. His critique of democracy is essentially Naderite: Corporations and other nonhuman entities exercise disproportionate power, alienating half of the voting-age population and separating rich from poor.

Gans pins his extended essay on what he calls "Journalism’s Theory of Democracy," a four-part doctrine: "(1) The journalist’s role is to inform citizens; (2) citizens are assumed to be informed if they regularly attend to the local, national, and international news journalists supply them; (3) the more informed citizens are, the more likely they are to participate politically, especially in the democratic debate that journalists consider central to participation in democracy; (4) the more that informed citizens participate, the more democratic America is likely to be."

Most reporters I know would balk at the notion that any unifying theory underpins our work, but Gans maintains that this one is "widely accepted"—as well as fundamentally flawed. It’s "unrealistic," "wishful thinking," even "a substitute for thinking about democracy." In his view, this self-mythology obfuscates the news media’s fundamental shortcoming: their failure to ignite a democratic fire under the citizenry.

Gans wants journalists to promote "citizens’ democracy," which, in newsroom practice, turns out to entail one grim topdown directive after another. There’s little room here for the underrated job of telling interesting stories in a compelling manner. Instead, reporters should borrow tactics from schoolteachers. The "first priority" of every news organization should be "to eliminate the continuing racial and class biases in the news." Satirists should be given "protection against censorship and job loss." And everyone, heaven knows, should spend more money: "If the news is as central to democracy as journalists argue, then more needs to be spent so that its impact is maximized."

Gans yearns for media that connect with citizens, but, like a shocking number of media critics, he seems vaguely hostile toward weblogs and other online publications that do just that. A. J. Liebling famously observed that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one." In an era when just about anybody can own one, perhaps things aren’t nearly as dire as Gans thinks.

—Matt Welch