The One Thing News Might Just Do for Democracy

• In Event: Normative Theories of Digital Journalism

Abstract

In Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press, Michael Schudson outlines “Six or Seven Things News Can Do for Democracy” (Inform, investigate, offer analysis, encourage social empathy, provide a public forum for debate, advocate for various points of view and, as a potential seventh, argue in favor democracy). With the growth of digital media, and the many different democratic potentials associated with new technologies, scholars have increasingly argued that journalism should do more of essentially all of these things for democracy (in various combinations). In this paper, I move in the opposite direction and suggest that Schudson—like many others outlining normative expectations for journalism—is far too ambitious. I argue that journalism, especially in its (in high-income democracies) increasingly diminished institutional state, can probably do only one truly distinct and important thing for democracy, namely make relatively accurate, accessible, relevant, and timely independently produced diverse information available about public affairs.

Author

• Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, U of Oxford