Mass Media in a

Democratic Society:
Keeping a Promise
Democracy & Journalism
Media organizations are expected to act as
watchdogs on government. Edmund Burke, in
a speech in Britain’s House of Commons
during the late 1700s, first called the media
the “fourth estate” (Ward, 2004) because it
performed this role.

With this in mind—that journalism functions as

part of a political system that relies on other
systemic actors in order to achieve its goal of
contributing to self-government—consider the
following report from NPR media
correspondent David Folkenflik:
 Democracy & Journalism
Newsrooms have been buzzing about the scenario for weeks: How would they handle
covering a president in real time who makes false claims about his own reelection? The
answer proved to be fact-checking, in some cases during his remarks from the White
House, and tough criticism after he finished.

A bit before 2:30 a.m. ET Wednesday morning, that scenario became reality. President
Trump baselessly alleged Democrats were committing fraud. Trump also claimed he
“did win the election,” even though some pivotal swing states have not yet been
projected for him by the AP or any of the major television networks.

NBC and MSNBC broke into his remarks, as did NPR, to correct the record. “There have
been several statements that are just not true,” NBC’s Savannah Guthrie said, noting
his false claims of taking Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

MSNBC’s Brian Williams said, “Our presidents don’t select our victors. . . . We always
allow a lot on election night, hyperbole. But when it veers into falsehood—we have not
called the states he claimed for victories.”
 Democracy & Journalism
MSNBC did not return to Trump’s remarks live.

CBS and ABC returned to their studios once Vice President Pence stepped forward.
“The president of the United States [is] castrating the facts of the election results that
have been reported tonight,” said Norah O’Donnell of CBS.

“We’ve never had a situation like this in the country,” said John Dickerson of CBS. “The
president is a steward of the American electoral system. . . . And he is trying to
undermine it while the count is still going on.”

“If we were watching this in another country, we would be shocked,” said CNN’s Abby
Phillip. “It’s a sign our democracy is in peril.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier told viewers most of the president’s claims were accurate.
Then Fox’s Chris Wallace weighed in: “This is an extremely flammable situation; the
president just threw a match into it. He hasn’t won the states [he claimed]. Nobody is
saying he won the states. The states haven’t said that he’s won.” (Folkenflik, 2020c)
 4th
Estate
The fact that these decisions were similar suggests that
the fourth estate as an institution was trying to hold other
institutions in the same political system to account.
Furthermore, journalists knew that many in their audiences
would be unlikely to believe them and to ascribe the worst
of motives to the choices.
 Democracy & Journalism
● In October 2017, one national poll found that 46
percent of registered voters believe that the news
media fabricate stories about President Donald J.
Trump.

● Only 37 percent believe the news media do not make

up stories.

● The Politico Morning Consult poll of almost 2,000

Americans also found that a mere 51 percent of
voters believe that the federal government should not
be able to revoke the broadcast licenses of those
news organizations who promulgate fabricated news
(Shepard, 2017).
 Democracy & Journalism
● Also in 2017—and for the first time in 17 years—a survey that
spanned thousands of people and dozens of countries found
that a majority of citizens said they did not trust government,
the media, nongovernmental organizations, and business “to
do what is right.

● For one institution to check the power of another, belief in the

institution itself and what it represents is essential.

● Yet journalists today are working in an environment where the

general public is skeptical to the point of cynicism, not only
about whether the news media can get stories “right” but
also regarding whether individual journalists and the news
organizations for which they work are motivated by
professional norms.
 DISINFORMATION:
THE TRANSFORMATION
TO JUNK NEWS
 Disinformation
Sissela Bok (1978), in her definition of lying, notes that the
reason people lie is to gain power; lies allow liars to define
situations in ways that give them an advantage.

● In 2020, the lies became a particular kind of political

framing: a meta-conspiracy theory called QAnon, which
postulated a global, Satan-worshipping, child-molesting
Democratic Party cabal ensconced in political power that
only then-President Donald J. Trump could thwart. In the
QAnon universe, with its internet roots, fake news became
news that you didn’t like, news that arose from outside
your “bubble,” and news that may have questioned your
very identity.
 Junk News

Junk news consists of alternate facts, stories that ignore

evidence, often for political gain, or content that functions
as clickbait rather than providing a genuine attempt to
inform.

● Junk news is the “bad” content that takes up so much

bandwidth on the internet and so much journalistic
effort to debunk that it closes the professional
“window” on the production of quality, evidence-based
content.

● Can you think of any examples of junk news you may

have seen in the last few years?
 Junk News
● On Oct. 30, 2017, Facebook executives told Congress that they
believed as many as 126 million Americans had received fake
news stories initiated by Russia as part of their Facebook
newsfeeds (Fiegerman & Byers, 2017). A study conducted by
the Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project found
that in 11 of 16 swing states—including Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Pennsylvania—that provided President Trump with his 2016
Electoral College victory margin, Twitter users received more
fake and junk news than authentic political coverage in the two
weeks before the November election (Wooley & Howard, 2017).

● Scholars who have begun to study the effect of widespread junk

news have concluded that junk news did make—and will
continue to make—a difference in how Americans frame politics
and hence think about political problems.
 Junk News
● However, Zuckerberg, in particular, has resisted having Facebook
labeled a media company despite the findings in multiple studies that
more and more Americans were getting their news from Facebook.

● The platform’s institutional role had become that of a media

company; it facilitates discussion about government, and it
collaborates with those in power and those who seek power.

● Facebook takes advantage of protections afforded only to individuals

and media organizations in the United States, specifically, the First
Amendment.

● However, by maintaining that Facebook is not a media organization,

the corporation is able to dodge the ethical obligations and legal
strictures incumbent on journalists and news organizations.
THE MEDIA’S POLITICAL ROLE
Recent scholarship outlines four normative roles for the media in democratic
political systems (Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, & White,
2009). In real life, and in real theory, individual organizations can fulfill
multiple roles simultaneously. These roles are as follows:

● The radical role operates when the media provide an alternate vision to the
current political and social situation in a country.

● The monitorial role is what citizens most often think of when they speak of
the watchdog function of the news media.

● The facilitative role is perhaps best captured by news coverage of elections

and political advertising about candidates and public issues. Both news and
ads can facilitate governing, although how well that role is accomplished is
the source of much analysis and debate.

● The collaborative role is when the media promote the views of the state.
Broadcasting weather forecasts can serve this role as can much less benign
forms of collaboration.
 “The press is doing everything within their
power to fight the magnificence of the phrase,
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand
the fact that this Administration has done more
than virtually any other Administration in its first
2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
(capitalization in the original)”
 Trump’s Direct Impact
● In the ensuing months, journalists were attacked, sometimes arrested, at
one point hit with a rubber bullet, and jeered at by crowds attending
Trump rallies and other protests.
○ Rescinded individual credentials
○ Mocked reporters - especially females
○ Doubled down in Sep. 2020 “they do deserve to be attacked”

● Trump’s treatment of the news media percolated through the political

system.
○ State and local officials sometimes took their cues from the
president, often by failing to respond to media requests for
information, locking out reporters from certain meetings, and
sometimes publicly browbeating individual journalists for their
coverage in various public forums.
Journalism & Political Perception
● As originally conceived, journalism was a public service. Yet, as academic
studies have shown, and the former president’s rhetoric emphasizes, the
belief that journalists operate in the public interest is not universally
accepted.

● Critical reporting—which can include a refusal to collaborate in spreading

lies by powerful figures as emphasized by the NPR report—is sometimes
viewed as a fundamental disloyalty to the system, one worthy of being
dismissed from it.

● In the world of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” there is always the
chance that critical coverage of government will be labeled “unpatriotic,”
particularly by those in power.
 Getting Elected
● For any politician to enact change, he or she must first be elected and, in
our mass society, that means turning to the mass media to reach the
electorate. In one classic study, voters admitted learning more about
candidates’ stands on issues from advertising than they did from news
(Patterson, 1980).

● So today, more than 30 years after the first studies indicated it to be

true, advertising is still the leading source of information for most people
in most campaigns—not just about candidates but about policy issues as
well.

● Because ads are a leading source of campaign information, factual

accuracy must be the starting point for ethical political advertising. As
philosopher Hannah Arendt has noted, “Freedom of information is a farce
unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are
not in dispute” (Arendt, 1970).
 Getting Elected
● News stories about elections emphasize strategy and tactics rather than
stands on issues, forcing voters who want to become informed about the
candidate’s policy choices to get their information from ads, often
“negative” or “attack” ads framed by the other side.

● The use of emotional arguments designed to stir listeners or viewers “to

set aside reason” is a “violation of democratic ethics” (Haiman, 1958, p.
388).

● However, there may be times when valid issues have strong emotional
content, such as the ongoing debate over immigration, gun control, and
the need for government to insure health care for all.

● The melding of emotion and issue in such cases is not unethical, but
totalitarian regimes have historically used emotional rather than rational
appeals to either gain or retain power.
 Leaders & Their Character
● The good opinion of the public is cultivated in more traditional, and more
predictable, ways.

○ The person who covers the winning candidate for a network will
almost assuredly become the White House correspondent for the
next four years.
■ Journalists covering a national election have almost as much
at stake as the candidates they cover.

○ Journalists treat front-runner differently than they do the remainder

of the candidate pack (Robinson & Sheehan, 1984). Front-runners
are the subject of closer scrutiny, but those examinations are
seldom about issues.
 Leaders & Their Character
● Conceptualizations of character have changed significantly since the
founding of the republic, when character was defined in Aristotelian
terms—an observable collection of habits, virtues, and vices.

● Freudian psychology has altered that definition to include motivation, the

subconscious, and relationships that help to form all of us as people.

● What journalists cover is “political character,” the intersection of

personality and public performance within the cultural and historical
contexts. Character is dynamic—the synergy of a person within an
environment (Davies, 1963)
 Leaders & Their Character
● Ethicist Sissela Bok (1978) has noted that when an unequal power
relationship is involved, it is possible to justify what would otherwise be
considered an unethical act.
● To paraphrase Bok, investigation of the private character of public people is
validated if the person investigated is also in a position to do harm.
○ In those cases, invading privacy in an attempt to counter that threat is
justified.

However, that invasion also needs to meet some tests (Schoeman,

1984):
● The invasion must be placed in a larger context of facts and history and
must include context to provide meaning.

● The revelation of private facts about political figures should meet the
traditional tests of journalism and needs to be linked to public, political
behaviors before publication or broadcast becomes ethically justifiable.

● The invasion of privacy must further the larger political discourse and must
meet the most demanding ethical test: the “need to know.”
 Leaders & Their Character
Even reporting that passes the three tests above must be filtered through
discretion.

Reporters covering political character should be aware that there are several
building blocks of character, including the:

● politician’s development of a sense of trust;

● politician’s own sense of self-worth and self-esteem;

● development of a politician’s relationship to power and authority;

● early influences on adult policy outlook;

● way a politician establishes contact with people;

● flexibility, adaptability, and purposefulness of mature adulthood; and

● historical moment.
 Leaders & Their Character
● The media’s current emphasis on covering political character
provides the best illustration of the need to balance the
demands of governing with privacy.
● No culture has ever expected its leaders to be saints; in fact,
some cultures have prized leadership that is decidedly
unsaintly.
● In American culture, the concept of public servant—which is
the work of politics—has been replaced by the epithet
“politician”—synonymous with “crook,” or “liar,” a caricature
reinforced in popular culture.
 Evaluating Political
Communication: History
● For the Greeks, who gave birth to democracy, the art of politics was
considered a gift from the gods, who provided men with aidos, a sense of
concern for the good opinion of others, and dike, a sense of justice that
makes civic peace possible.
○ In the ancient myth, these gifts were bestowed on all citizens, not just
some elite.

● All free men were able to exercise the art of politics through rhetoric and
argument in the assembly, a form of direct democracy that survived for only
a few years in Athens.

● The Greeks called it polity, which translates as community.

 Evaluating Political
Communication: Now
● Evaluating all this political information—news, advertising, and
entertainment—is a problem for both media consumers and journalists. As
news blends into entertainment and persuasion leaches into both genres,
providing a consistent way of examining every political message becomes
essential in ethical analysis.

● Political scientist Bruce A. Williams (2009) has begun this process with a
four-part test he believes will help you determine when information has
political relevance:

○ First, is the information useful—does it provide citizens with the kind

of information that helps individual and collective decision-making?
○ Second, is the information sufficient—is there enough of it and at
enough depth to allow people to make informed choices?
○ Third, is the information trustworthy?
○ Fourth, who is the “audience”—the political “we” on which the
ancient Greeks placed so much emphasis?
 Evaluating Political
Communication: Now
● Information that meets these criteria should be considered politically relevant,
mediated information regardless of genre or source, Williams says.

● Under this test, a John Oliver newscast or a Stephen Colbert monologue could
be considered politically relevant communication every bit as much as a
campaign ad or an investigative piece.

● Under this sort of analysis, cable news programming, which often features
dueling opinions by talking heads speaking over each other (often
unsubstantiated by evidence), would actually fare less well than the comedy
monologue.

● In a famous dust up with cable news personality Tucker Carlson, Comedy

Central comedian Jon Stewart took on the entire genre. Stewart suggested
that his show was more truthful and politically relevant. Interestingly, Stewart
has made that claim in other arenas—that Comedy Central actually has
political clout—and adds that it personally frightens him, which gets a good
laugh but makes a poignant point.
Evaluating Political Communication: Now
● Putting all political communication into the same arena also has another virtue: Every
message can be evaluated along the same standard. Here, again, Williams (2009) suggests
four criteria.

○ Transparency—Does the audience know who is speaking? This has become a major
problem in recent elections with the rise of PACs and groups not bound by campaign
finance rules and rarely bothered with the total accuracy of their claims.

○ Pluralism—Does the media environment provide an opportunity for diverse points

of view, either in different messages that are equally accessible or within a single
message? Does every side have access to the engines of information that are now
the modern equivalent of the face-to-face rhetoric of ancient Greece?

○ Verisimilitude—Do the sources of the messages take responsibility for the truth
claims they explicitly and implicitly make, even if these claims are not strictly
verifiable in any formal sense?

○ Practice—Does the message encourage modeling, rehearsing, preparing, and

learning for civic engagement? Does it encourage activities such as voting or less
direct forms of political activity such as thinking about issues, looking at websites,
blogging, or talking to neighbors face-to-face? Is the ad or article empowering, or
does it contribute to the cacophony that has dominated recent political campaigns?