Status Updates From Public Opinion

THE APPEAL TO REASON
Plato's ship at sea

"it is not the order of nature that I should handle a mutiny..."
"We shall all go on the rocks, they to be punished for their sins;, I, with the assurance that I knew better..."

Reason is slower than the rate at which action has to be taken
Discovery and the propagation of that which is proven takes time

Looking with hope even in dark events

Disputes and how judges decide the basic facts of an issue and "boil the fat out of" it, leaving only well defined facts.
All who are not entangled now will not be entangled as they can view the issue through the facts and not stereotypes and slogans.

All this can lead to the liquidation of the "censoring, stereotyping and dramatizing apparatus"

Civic education as preparation for dealing with the unseen environment

THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC

Private citizens couldn't digest all this information, most issues can only be dealt with by well informed insiders.
The public can only judge whether the conditions and procedures are sound, but not the facts themselves.

Appealing to the public usually means escaping insider criticism and winning popularity contest -> citizen can be made skeptical through education
Insisting on procedure

Information collected by bureaus would be available to all for study

Dry rot -> circulation of men and ideas b/w agencies

INTELLIGENCE WORK

Specialists in departments learn all they can and send reports
Experts translate, but must not have a "policy"

Assembling of information and control of policy must be divorced
Power of experts comes from impartiality

Existing bureaucracy can't be overhauled -> info agencies for each one make the work of each agency visible to all

The question of funding
Coordination, standards of measurement

“It is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo environment. To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response. But because it is behavior, the consequences, if they are acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated but in the real environment where action eventuates.”

“For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities, and that in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond.”

“The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experiences is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event. That is why until we know what others think they know, we cannot truly understand their acts.”

“Whether they themselves believe in their public character, or whether they merely permit the chamberlain to stage -manage it, there are atleast two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the private and human.”

THE ENTERING WEDGE

The social scientist -> how does he get his laboratory?"
Low status -> low confidence and influence
Assembles data out of mass of unrelated material

Several data gathering institutions demonstrate the need to interpose "expertness" between the private citizen and the wider world

NEWS, TRUTH AND A CONCLUSION

Distinction between news and truth
News is regarded as organ of direct democracy, but cannot translate the whole of public life.

Quality of information machinery -> social organization -> quality of news

Primary defect of popular government is expecting news to translate the unseen environment without expert institutions that gather data.

Due to the above, to create ideological news, one can arrange a stunt.

The strike is reported when & as it affects the special reader, to the people involved it is much more richly complicated.

Complex circumstances -> overt act as signal -> signal published as stereotyped bulletin -> meaning injected by reader

No formal process -> reporter/editor discretion
Change of direction risky, better to let news taper out

THE NATURE OF NEWS
Watchers stationed at places.
Example of "John Smith" -> newspapers know in a few minutes the bald facts recorded at the County Clerk's Office.

For news, something definite must occur in unmistakable form, a manifestation.
News is the report of an aspect of social conditions, not of seeds germinating, but of first sprouts.

News service requires a good machinery of record.

THE CONSTANT READER

Constancy depends on habits
Judgement of news based on how we feel involved -> accountability as special readers -> news edited for people who wish to read about themselves

"printed diary of a home town"
Economics of news - reporting most poorly paid
Deeper reason -> The Brass Check
What is the "fair body of truth"?