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The Media World and Democratic Representation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Harvey C. Mansfield Jr.
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Extract

THE MEDIA ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING - THAT IS FOR certain - but of what? They appear at frrst to be nothing in themselves, merely a facility of communication. They facilitate communication among a people, especially among a large people, and thus make that people more of a people, a whole that is conscious of itself and that, being so, can move together. We call a people of this sort a democratic people, or simply a democracy, implying that the communication among a people which makes possible a whole people is, or substitutes for, a form of government. As the media facilitate communication especially among a large people, they especially facilitate modern democracy, which, as opposed to ancient democracy, is the democracy of a large people.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1979 , pp. 318 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1979

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Footnotes

1

This paper was presented at a conference on ‘Power in Industrial Democracies’ sponsored by the Fondation Internationale des Sciences Humaines in Paris, 27 October 1978.

References

2 New York Times, 19–20 July 1978.

3 Aristotle, , Politics, 1253a2–18 Google Scholar .

4 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, ‘The Exhausted West’, Harvard Magazine, vol. 80, no. 6, 07–08 1978, p. 23 Google Scholar.

5 Tocqueville, De, Democracy in America, Lawrence, D. trans., Doubleday & Co New York, 1969, II, II, 2–3, pp. 506–509 Google Scholar.

6 I am indebted to Bernard Cazes for this observation.

7 Efron, Edith, The News Twisters, Nash Publishing, Los Angeles, 1972 Google Scholar; Sigal, Leon V., Reporters and Officials, Heath, D. C., Lexington, Mass., 1973 Google Scholar; Kristol, Irving, ‘Crisis for Journalism: The Missing Elite’, in Will, George F., ed., Press, Politics and Popular Government, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, 1972 Google Scholar; and a forthcoming article by Stanley Rothman, ‘The Mass Media in Post Industrial America’.

8 Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., p. 23.

9 De Tocqueville, op. cit., I, I, 5, p. 66 and I, II, 10, p. 397.

10 Weaver, Paul H., in Will, George F. (ed.), Press Politics and Popular Government, p. 38 Google Scholar; and Anastaplo, George, ‘Self–Government and the Mass Media: A Practical Man’s Guide’, ibid., pp. 193, 197, 217Google Scholar.

11 Tocqueville, De, Democracy in America, II, I, 1, pp. 429–433 Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., I, II, 5, pp. 198, 229; II, I, 2, pp. 434–435.

13 Solzhenitsyn, , op. cit., p. 23 Google Scholar; Berns, Walter, ‘The Constitution and a Responsible Press’, in Clor, Harry M., The Mass Media and Modern Democracy, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1974, p. 130 Google Scholar.

14 Cater, Douglass, The Fourth Branch of Government, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1959 Google Scholar; McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media, McGraw–Hill, New York, 1964, p. 213 Google Scholar.

15 Anastaplo, , op. cit., p. 195 Google Scholar; McLuhan, op. cit., chs. 21, 31.

16 Aristotle, , Politics, 1273a27, 1294b9 Google Scholar.