Democracy and the News

In Democracy and the News, one of America's most astute social critics explores the crucial link between a weakened news media and a weakened democracy. Building on his 1979 classic media critique Deciding What's News, Herbert J. Gans shows how powerful interest groups and their lobbies, with the help of the White House, are sabotaging representative democracy. In turn he reveals how economic and other changes, in the news media and the news audience, limit journalists' ability to inform the citizenry and defend democracy. Gans argues that journalism suffers from assembly-line modes of production, with the major product being publicity for the president and other top political officials, the very people citizens most distrust. But he makes a series of incisive suggestions about what the news media can do to better report the political news and what political and economic changes in America might move us closer to a citizen's democracy. Touching on questions of critical national importance, this book sheds new light on the vital importance of a healthy news media for a healthy democracy.