HOW A DEMOCRACY DECIDES
Throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, newspapers,
and to a lesser extent network television news, constituted the
agora in which American public life, including political life, began its
sorting-out process. The shared information they provided helped
lead to public judgments about important matters. Not everyone read
the same newspapers or watched the same newscasts, and not everyone
gave them the same level of attention and interest, but virtually
every citizen was exposed on a regular basis to the news of the day.
As a result, citizens were able to reach the public judgments that
informed, instructed, and validated the actions of their government
representatives, elected or otherwise. Absent public judgment, that is
to say when no rough consensus can be reached, important issues
remain unresolved.
