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Democracy without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society
As local media institutions collapse and news deserts sprout up across the country, the US is facing a profound journalism crisis. Meanwhile, continuous revelations about the role that major media outlets--from Facebook to Fox News--play in the spread of misinformation have exposed deep pathologies in American communication systems. Despite these threats to democracy, policy responses have been woefully inadequate.
In Democracy Without Journalism? Victor Pickard argues that we're overlooking the core roots of the crisis. By uncovering degradations caused by run-amok commercialism, he brings into focus the historical antecedents, market failures, and policy inaction that led to the implosion of commercial journalism and the proliferation of misinformation through both social media and mainstream news. The problem isn't just the loss of journalism or irresponsibility of Facebook, but the very structure upon which our profit-driven media system is built. The rise of a "misinformation society" is symptomatic of historical and endemic weaknesses in the American media system tracing back to the early commercialization of the press in the 1800s. While professionalization was meant to resolve tensions between journalism's public service and profit imperatives, Pickard argues that it merely camouflaged deeper structural maladies. Journalism has always been in crisis. The market never supported the levels of journalism--especially local, international, policy, and investigative reporting--that a healthy democracy requires. Today these long-term defects have metastasized.
In this book, Pickard presents a counter-narrative that shows how the modern journalism crisis stems from media's historical over-reliance on advertising revenue, the ascendance of media monopolies, and a lack of public oversight. He draws attention to the perils of monopoly control over digital infrastructures and the rise of platform monopolies, especially the "Facebook problem." He looks to experiments from the Progressive and New Deal Eras--as well as public media models around the world--to imagine a more reliable and democratic information system. The book envisions what a new kind of journalism might look like, emphasizing the need for a publicly owned and democratically governed media system. Amid growing scrutiny of unaccountable monopoly control over media institutions and concerns about the consequences to democracy, now is an opportune moment to address fundamental flaws in US news and information systems and push for alternatives. Ultimately, the goal is to reinvent journalism.
In Democracy Without Journalism? Victor Pickard argues that we're overlooking the core roots of the crisis. By uncovering degradations caused by run-amok commercialism, he brings into focus the historical antecedents, market failures, and policy inaction that led to the implosion of commercial journalism and the proliferation of misinformation through both social media and mainstream news. The problem isn't just the loss of journalism or irresponsibility of Facebook, but the very structure upon which our profit-driven media system is built. The rise of a "misinformation society" is symptomatic of historical and endemic weaknesses in the American media system tracing back to the early commercialization of the press in the 1800s. While professionalization was meant to resolve tensions between journalism's public service and profit imperatives, Pickard argues that it merely camouflaged deeper structural maladies. Journalism has always been in crisis. The market never supported the levels of journalism--especially local, international, policy, and investigative reporting--that a healthy democracy requires. Today these long-term defects have metastasized.
In this book, Pickard presents a counter-narrative that shows how the modern journalism crisis stems from media's historical over-reliance on advertising revenue, the ascendance of media monopolies, and a lack of public oversight. He draws attention to the perils of monopoly control over digital infrastructures and the rise of platform monopolies, especially the "Facebook problem." He looks to experiments from the Progressive and New Deal Eras--as well as public media models around the world--to imagine a more reliable and democratic information system. The book envisions what a new kind of journalism might look like, emphasizing the need for a publicly owned and democratically governed media system. Amid growing scrutiny of unaccountable monopoly control over media institutions and concerns about the consequences to democracy, now is an opportune moment to address fundamental flaws in US news and information systems and push for alternatives. Ultimately, the goal is to reinvent journalism.
261 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2019
25 people are currently reading
295 people want to read
About the author
Victor Pickard
11 books8 followersVictor Pickard is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He is the author of America's Battle for Media Democracy and co-author of After Net Neutrality: A New Deal for the Digital Age.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 16, 2025
Perfect! Talks about the problem of journalism (misinformation, huge monopolies, commercial media) in depth. A very insightful book that concludes that the only way we can save journalism is if we adopt a social democratic model, in other words: journalism must not be commercial, it must be public.
FROM THE BOOK:
This book operates from the assumption that most democratic theories presuppose the existence of healthy information and communication systems. Without a viable news media system, democracy is reduced to an unattainable ideal. (pg 9)
NERVOUS LIBERALS: This recurring pattern of policy failure recalls the phrase “nervous liberals” featured in media historian Brett Gary’s book of the same title.
--> Over the decades, liberal policymakers and intellectuals have consistently applied classical democratic theories—the stuff of “public spheres” and “marketplaces of ideas”—to a commercial media system that systematically underserves these ideals. In theorizing this failure, liberal thinkers sometimes arrive at a structural critique of a market-driven media system. However, once they find themselves arriving at the kinds of social democratic conclusions that would necessitate government intervention in media markets, they tend to retreat to extolling the comfortable sanctities of the market and its propensity for innovation and efficiency. Any concession that government may need to intervene in the face of overt market failure must be accompanied with sufficient caveats and qualifiers that dissuade accusations of statism, authoritarianism, and anti-capitalism. These are the nervous liberals—liberals made nervous by their own conclusions. (pg 57)
A healthy media system requires content defined by three overlapping characteristics: pluralism, variety, and diversity. Pluralism refers to the range of ideas and views available in a media system, variety to the mix of genres and types of media content, and diversity to difference in characteristics and form. Media ownership concentration threatens all three. Most democratic nations promote media diversity in all its forms to ensure access to a wide variety of information sources. (pg 120)
HARMS OF FACEBOOK: It is difficult to overstate the social harms of Facebook’s monopoly power, especially to the integrity of our news and information systems. As an algorithm-driven global editor and news gatekeeper for over two billion users, Facebook wields unprecedented power over much of the world’s information system. In the United States, where Americans increasingly access news through the platform, Facebook’s role in the 2016 presidential election has drawn well-deserved scrutiny. Moreover, along with Google, Facebook is devouring the lion’s share of digital advertising revenue and starving the institutions that provide quality news and information— the same struggling news organizations that it expects to help fact-check against misinformation. Journalism in general, and local news in particular, are increasingly threatened by the Facebook-Google duopoly, which in recent years took a combined 85 percent of all new US digital advertising revenue growth, leaving only scraps for news publishers. According to one study, these two companies control 73 percent of the total online advertising market. Meanwhile, these same companies play an outsized role in proliferating misinformation. (pg 125-126)
The historical record shows that press subsidies are completely compatible with democratic society in both the United States and around the globe— in fact, they positively correlate with stronger democracies. (pg 157-158)
Commercial journalism’s collapse is now indisputable. But as a society we have yet to face up to what this means. No new business model that can save journalism is waiting to be discovered. No purely profit-driven model can address the growing news deserts that are sprouting up all over the United States. It is questionable whether commercial news media ever fully aligned with society’s democratic needs, but now it is abundantly clear the market cannot support the level of journalism—especially local, international, policy, and investigative reporting—that democracy requires. (pg 164)
There are five general approaches conducive to such a project:
• Establishing “public options” (i.e., noncommercial/nonprofit, supported by public subsidies), such as well-funded public media institutions and municipal broadband networks.
• Breaking up/preventing media monopolies and oligopolies to encourage diversity and to curtail profit-maximizing behavior.
• Regulating news outlets via public interest protections and public service obligations such as ascertainment of society’s information needs.
• Enabling worker control by unionizing newsrooms, facilitating employee-owned institutions and cooperatives, and maintaining professional codes that shield journalism from business operations.
• Fostering community ownership, oversight, and governance of newsrooms, and mandating accountability to diverse constituencies. (pg 168-169)
The author has been arguing throughout this book that media subsidies are not a slippery slope toward totalitarianism. Indeed, democratic nations around the globe have somehow figured out how to create strong public media systems while enjoying democratic benefits that put the United States to shame. Nonetheless, independence from government capture is certainly a legitimate concern. An ironclad prerequisite for any public media system is that it must be firewalled from government (as well as from other powerful influences). Regardless of the funding source, a key requirement is severing all previous ties once money enters the trust. All donations must be cleansed of any institutional or personal attachments to ensure that journalism retains complete independence from any funder or government entity. These donations should follow the “double-blind” process mentioned earlier: No one will know exactly what kind of journalism their money is funding, and no grantee will know from whence their funding came. This political autonomy must be tethered to economic independence—in other words, adequate funding and resources—otherwise this new system would simply reenact the earlier errors of public broadcasting and create another weak system susceptible to political and economic pressures. (pg 169)
FROM THE BOOK:
This book operates from the assumption that most democratic theories presuppose the existence of healthy information and communication systems. Without a viable news media system, democracy is reduced to an unattainable ideal. (pg 9)
NERVOUS LIBERALS: This recurring pattern of policy failure recalls the phrase “nervous liberals” featured in media historian Brett Gary’s book of the same title.
--> Over the decades, liberal policymakers and intellectuals have consistently applied classical democratic theories—the stuff of “public spheres” and “marketplaces of ideas”—to a commercial media system that systematically underserves these ideals. In theorizing this failure, liberal thinkers sometimes arrive at a structural critique of a market-driven media system. However, once they find themselves arriving at the kinds of social democratic conclusions that would necessitate government intervention in media markets, they tend to retreat to extolling the comfortable sanctities of the market and its propensity for innovation and efficiency. Any concession that government may need to intervene in the face of overt market failure must be accompanied with sufficient caveats and qualifiers that dissuade accusations of statism, authoritarianism, and anti-capitalism. These are the nervous liberals—liberals made nervous by their own conclusions. (pg 57)
A healthy media system requires content defined by three overlapping characteristics: pluralism, variety, and diversity. Pluralism refers to the range of ideas and views available in a media system, variety to the mix of genres and types of media content, and diversity to difference in characteristics and form. Media ownership concentration threatens all three. Most democratic nations promote media diversity in all its forms to ensure access to a wide variety of information sources. (pg 120)
HARMS OF FACEBOOK: It is difficult to overstate the social harms of Facebook’s monopoly power, especially to the integrity of our news and information systems. As an algorithm-driven global editor and news gatekeeper for over two billion users, Facebook wields unprecedented power over much of the world’s information system. In the United States, where Americans increasingly access news through the platform, Facebook’s role in the 2016 presidential election has drawn well-deserved scrutiny. Moreover, along with Google, Facebook is devouring the lion’s share of digital advertising revenue and starving the institutions that provide quality news and information— the same struggling news organizations that it expects to help fact-check against misinformation. Journalism in general, and local news in particular, are increasingly threatened by the Facebook-Google duopoly, which in recent years took a combined 85 percent of all new US digital advertising revenue growth, leaving only scraps for news publishers. According to one study, these two companies control 73 percent of the total online advertising market. Meanwhile, these same companies play an outsized role in proliferating misinformation. (pg 125-126)
The historical record shows that press subsidies are completely compatible with democratic society in both the United States and around the globe— in fact, they positively correlate with stronger democracies. (pg 157-158)
Commercial journalism’s collapse is now indisputable. But as a society we have yet to face up to what this means. No new business model that can save journalism is waiting to be discovered. No purely profit-driven model can address the growing news deserts that are sprouting up all over the United States. It is questionable whether commercial news media ever fully aligned with society’s democratic needs, but now it is abundantly clear the market cannot support the level of journalism—especially local, international, policy, and investigative reporting—that democracy requires. (pg 164)
There are five general approaches conducive to such a project:
• Establishing “public options” (i.e., noncommercial/nonprofit, supported by public subsidies), such as well-funded public media institutions and municipal broadband networks.
• Breaking up/preventing media monopolies and oligopolies to encourage diversity and to curtail profit-maximizing behavior.
• Regulating news outlets via public interest protections and public service obligations such as ascertainment of society’s information needs.
• Enabling worker control by unionizing newsrooms, facilitating employee-owned institutions and cooperatives, and maintaining professional codes that shield journalism from business operations.
• Fostering community ownership, oversight, and governance of newsrooms, and mandating accountability to diverse constituencies. (pg 168-169)
The author has been arguing throughout this book that media subsidies are not a slippery slope toward totalitarianism. Indeed, democratic nations around the globe have somehow figured out how to create strong public media systems while enjoying democratic benefits that put the United States to shame. Nonetheless, independence from government capture is certainly a legitimate concern. An ironclad prerequisite for any public media system is that it must be firewalled from government (as well as from other powerful influences). Regardless of the funding source, a key requirement is severing all previous ties once money enters the trust. All donations must be cleansed of any institutional or personal attachments to ensure that journalism retains complete independence from any funder or government entity. These donations should follow the “double-blind” process mentioned earlier: No one will know exactly what kind of journalism their money is funding, and no grantee will know from whence their funding came. This political autonomy must be tethered to economic independence—in other words, adequate funding and resources—otherwise this new system would simply reenact the earlier errors of public broadcasting and create another weak system susceptible to political and economic pressures. (pg 169)
September 13, 2021
This is a good book to read along with The Expanding News Desert and Losing the News. Pickard's book was published in 2020. I recently did a presentation on journalism history and local journalism, and while I was only 2/3 done with this book at that time I wound up using this as a reference. Pickard outlines the issues with the for-profit system of news coverage, pointing out issues I'd never considered. One thing that struck me is this is the first book I've read where the author advocates for scrapping the for-profit model entirely. I do agree more models need supported and that model, and even a not-for-profit model, have flaws that mean that we need to look at what works in other countries. A really good book, particularly the sections about the positives and negatives on possible new ways to support local journalism.
June 4, 2021
Unfortunately, too much of the conversation about the crisis in journalism is focused on the closing of newspapers and the loss of jobs as an economic problem. To be sure, the news about the news is frightful. The number of local reporting jobs has cratered from 455,000 in 1990 to just 183,200 in 2016. Many venerable old papers have closed, with 1,800l local papers gone or merged since 2004. Penelope Muse Abernathy, an expert on journalism at the University of North Carolina, says that as of 2018 171 US counties had no local paper and nearly half had only one, which was often just a weekly.
When you hear about these doleful statistics, it’s usually in the context of a discussion of the economics of the commercial news business. And it’s absolutely true that for a whole host of reasons, but mainly the internet, the old model of an ad-supported newspaper is no longer viable. But if we only imagine the survival of journalism in business terms, we’ll never get to where we need to be, which is recognizing, indeed remembering, its critical role as democratic infrastructure. And this is all the more painful at a moment when there’s rising attention to the precariousness of American democracy, more funding than ever for efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation, and a government that is making the case for spending trillions on many other kinds of infrastructure.
Here I’m channeling a set of arguments made by Victor Pickard, a media studies scholar and former senior research fellow at Free Press, whose excellent 2020 book Democracy Without Journalism: Confronting the Misinformation Society, made it to the top of my reading pile last weekend. He points out that there is a real correlation between a healthy local news ecosystem and levels of civic and voter engagement. After Seattle and Denver each lost one of their two major papers, the number of people getting involved with local civic groups or contacting their representatives declined significantly. A study of the 2010 midterm elections found that people living in districts without robust election coverage were less able to evaluate their congressional choices and thus less likely to vote. On the more positive side, economist Matthew Gentzkow has found that reading newspapers can mobilize as many as 13% of nonvoters to vote. Pickard also notes that since “voters in news deserts tend to base their vote more on national than local news [they] thus follow ‘partisan heuristics’ that lead to increased polarization.”
Read the rest of my review here: https://theconnector.substack.com/p/w...
When you hear about these doleful statistics, it’s usually in the context of a discussion of the economics of the commercial news business. And it’s absolutely true that for a whole host of reasons, but mainly the internet, the old model of an ad-supported newspaper is no longer viable. But if we only imagine the survival of journalism in business terms, we’ll never get to where we need to be, which is recognizing, indeed remembering, its critical role as democratic infrastructure. And this is all the more painful at a moment when there’s rising attention to the precariousness of American democracy, more funding than ever for efforts to fight misinformation and disinformation, and a government that is making the case for spending trillions on many other kinds of infrastructure.
Here I’m channeling a set of arguments made by Victor Pickard, a media studies scholar and former senior research fellow at Free Press, whose excellent 2020 book Democracy Without Journalism: Confronting the Misinformation Society, made it to the top of my reading pile last weekend. He points out that there is a real correlation between a healthy local news ecosystem and levels of civic and voter engagement. After Seattle and Denver each lost one of their two major papers, the number of people getting involved with local civic groups or contacting their representatives declined significantly. A study of the 2010 midterm elections found that people living in districts without robust election coverage were less able to evaluate their congressional choices and thus less likely to vote. On the more positive side, economist Matthew Gentzkow has found that reading newspapers can mobilize as many as 13% of nonvoters to vote. Pickard also notes that since “voters in news deserts tend to base their vote more on national than local news [they] thus follow ‘partisan heuristics’ that lead to increased polarization.”
Read the rest of my review here: https://theconnector.substack.com/p/w...
February 27, 2021
For profit is bad. Hence Newspapers are bad. There should be One Truth, and it shall be called Pravda. And the Government will fight Misinformation or popular 'Fake News' with the help of small academic warlords like Pickard who happen to have lots of nephews and nieces to hire in an ever growing department of Truth at the Whatever University.
April 6, 2024
Incredibly depressing subject. Media should be screaming from the rooftops about this issue, but maybe that is exactly part of Pickard's point. Considering its ironic label as the "fourth estate," the dominant news model in the U.S. fundamentally does not treat news media as a public good. Despite many Americans' unjustified antagonism toward public media, they must either choose between two choices: witness the collapse of informative, unsensational local news; or finally start moving away from the for-profit news model.
Pickard offers many solutions and a vision of a brighter future for news media. Unfortunately, it is hard to not feel pessimistic about the situation we are in – so much damage has already been done, and our current trajectory is getting no better.
Support local news and non-profit journalism (if you can)!
Pickard offers many solutions and a vision of a brighter future for news media. Unfortunately, it is hard to not feel pessimistic about the situation we are in – so much damage has already been done, and our current trajectory is getting no better.
Support local news and non-profit journalism (if you can)!
June 14, 2024
I read it about four years too late. The situation has worsened, and the analysis is prophetic in parts. However I wasn't fully convinced by the final analysis around public media relative to nonprofits.
July 30, 2021
Brilliant! One of my absolute favorite reads from 2021.
The author passionately argues about the failures of for-profit media, and brings the receipts to prove it.
The author passionately argues about the failures of for-profit media, and brings the receipts to prove it.
March 1, 2023
this was interesting but it was so dense i almost cried
February 27, 2020
In Journalism without Democracy?: Confronting the Misinformation Society, Pickard argues that the advertising-based journalism model isn’t in crisis now; it’s always been in crisis. From the time of Hearst and his Yellow Journalism, the print media has been sensationalist in nature. Inherently the “chinese wall” between the newsroom and the salesroom will always be destroyed in the interest of more sales. The interwar period saw what appeared to be a time of stability in the journalist economy. Additionally, newspapers were conservative and stood anti-Union in the editorial boards.
By this time, academics argued that there were four basic models of journalism – authoritarian, communist, liberal and libertarian. Pickard argues that the liberal and libertarian models were often the same. Additionally, any social democratic model would be rejected in the Red Scare on the grounds that if fit in the communist model. Thus, the argument goes, Journalism should be left to the market like other commodities.
Yet, information about the world is not only a public good but serves the “public good.” And, as such, there should be some government involvement in the market. The Founders knew this was the case; and, they offered postal subsidies to newspapers to increase circulation and dissemination required of an informed electorate. Television and radio are offered use of the public airways. A model that accounts for modern technology and guarantees the public good is a social democratic model that can promote an educated electorate.
The unipolar international system based upon American military and economic dominance coached in post-War political systems is over. What comes next? Pickard’s recommendations might not all be politically viable, but they add to the conversation.
By this time, academics argued that there were four basic models of journalism – authoritarian, communist, liberal and libertarian. Pickard argues that the liberal and libertarian models were often the same. Additionally, any social democratic model would be rejected in the Red Scare on the grounds that if fit in the communist model. Thus, the argument goes, Journalism should be left to the market like other commodities.
Yet, information about the world is not only a public good but serves the “public good.” And, as such, there should be some government involvement in the market. The Founders knew this was the case; and, they offered postal subsidies to newspapers to increase circulation and dissemination required of an informed electorate. Television and radio are offered use of the public airways. A model that accounts for modern technology and guarantees the public good is a social democratic model that can promote an educated electorate.
The unipolar international system based upon American military and economic dominance coached in post-War political systems is over. What comes next? Pickard’s recommendations might not all be politically viable, but they add to the conversation.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews