Democracy and journalism are not the same thing. Most of the key philosophical works that lay out a case for democracy or a theory of democracy make no reference to journalism. This is not, of course, surprising—there was nojournalism in ancient Greece. Even when the thinkers around the American and French Revolutions were making their arguments for republican government in pamphlets and in the pages of weekly newspapers, the press played little role in their calculations.11xThis essay is forthcoming in Michael Schudson, Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (Cambridge: Polity, 2008). An earlier version of this essay is forthcoming in the journal Cuadernos de Communicacion, published by the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile.
Later, and with growing assurance through the years, journalists themselves have insisted that their work is essential to the public good. Their self-promotion, along with what came to be the self-evident importance of freedom of expression in any society claiming to be a liberal democracy, made the importance of journalism to democracy seem obvious. One prominent American scholar of journalism, James Carey, concluded that journalism and democracy are one and the same, that “journalism as a practice is unthinkable except in the context of democracy; in fact, journalism is usefully understood as another name for democracy.”22xJames W. Carey, “Afterword: The Culture in Question,” James Carey: A Critical Reader, ed. Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) 33
This takes the plea for journalism’s democratic virtue a step too far. That journalism is crucial to modern democracy seems clear; that it is not by any means sufficientfor democracy and journalism are not the same thing. Most of the key philosophical works that lay out a case for democracy or a theory of democracy make no reference to journalism. This is not, of course, surprising—there was no journalism in ancient Greece. Even when the thinkers around the American and French Revolutions were making their arguments for republican government in pamphlets and in the pages of weekly newspapers, the press played little role in their calculations.