Democracy and the news

Political Psychology Section committee member Daniel McInerney reviews American sociologist Herbert J Gans' Democracy and the News, which remains as relevant today and built on his 1979 classic media critique, Deciding What's News.

We all live in a democracy, or so we are told. In a year of elections across the globe, it is hard not to notice the machinery of democracy in action. Some of us watch the news, and of those who do, some watch it almost religiously, with the defence, "You need to know what is happening in the world", even if it is likely to be false, irrelevant or of little, if any, importance. 

In his work, Gans highlights that in an ideal world, news and journalism should be an important part of democracy, enabling citizens to be more informed about what is happening, whether locally, nationally, or internationally. Indeed, the press is considered the Fourth Estate and attempted restrictions are a touchstone for public discontent. 

That being said, it is a journalist's job to inform if the democratic process is to be truly meaningful to citizens. Otherwise, the concept of democracy as 'a country belonging to its citizens' risks looking meaningless. Gans quotes Pulitzer prize-winner Anthony Lewis, who wrote in his last column for the New York Times, "The most important office in a democracy, Justice Louis Brandeis said, is the office of the citizen." 

What Gans does not highlight, but what was highlighted in the 2002 BBC documentary series, Century of the Self, was this telling quote from public relations historian Stuart Ewen: "It is not that the people are in charge, but it is that the people's desires are in charge. The people are not in charge. They exercise no decision-making power in this environment."  

Consumer culture

This implies that people are driven not by rational thinking but by irrational and unconscious desires, which, far from empowering them, does a lot to disempower them. One could say corporate structures have successfully exploited this through the development of 'consumer culture', whereby we are defined by - and define ourselves by - what we own and buy, rather than who we are. 

Gans expands on this by arguing that as citizens, we are resigned to our lack of power given the growth of organisations (or indeed quangos in the UK). Furthermore, he argues that citizens may not even want power and so we focus on controlling areas that subjectively matter to us, i.e.  buying goods and services from big corporations, which also reflects corporate and consumer culture, and, perhaps not surprisingly, has become increasingly widespread. 

Much of the news media is now part of the wider corporate culture in both the US and the UK, so Gans argues, any idea that the media facilitates democracy and active democratic participation is an illusion!  It remains to be seen whether the upcoming US presidential elections will make us feel any easier about accurate reporting…

References 

Gans, H. J. (2003). Democracy and the News. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515132-1