Does Democracy Rely on Free Press?

I was listening to Episode 67 of StackOverflow and heard Jeff and Joel talking about Craigslist. Apparently Joel Spolsky is not a fan. Details are in the show notes if you're interested.

That part that caught my ear was Joel saying that free press is necessary for democracy to work. Countries like North Korea get away with lunacy in part because of state-run and state-controlled press. In the US, he argued, Craigslist was taking away the revenue stream from the press, meaning more newspapers are shutting down and thus are harming our democratic system. At least, I think that's what he's saying. If not he can feel free to comment here and correct me.

I got to wondering about that. What makes democracy work (I should probably note that we're not a democracy per-se, but a Representative Republic or Representative Democracy instead of a Direct Democracy) is participation of the people. If the people care, we find a way to get what we want.

Joel was saying that without the free press, the people aren't informed of corruption in the government. Scandals and atrocities are hidden away.

In my view these things already happen in plain sight. People just don't care. Ever talk to a teenager? They're in many respects not all that different from adults. My own teenage daughter didn't know that the movie Catch Me If You Can was based on a true story. Despite the fact we watched it. And told her that. And saw it in the news at the time.

Oh, sure, one anecdote does not a trend make. The problem is that there are numerous examples. And her friends, too, tend to be on the bubble-headed side. Ignorant of the world around them not just in the stereotypical Americans wanting a familiar McDonalds while touring Japan type ignorance (what the hell is a "mega muffin"??) but rather the ignorance of not having any clue of what's going on right in their home town or in the local news when it's being discussed right in front of them.

There's been a trend emphasized more since the Bush administration was in power (with allegations of his administration being heavily anti-science) that our culture has shifted to having a pride in ignorance. Intelligence was to be mocked; you were "too good" for everyone else if you were proud of having a PhD or being interested in science. What comes of that? Ignorance of what your government is doing, for one.

The fact that most people are struggling now to pay bills and just keep a roof over their heads have taken front seat to caring about how our government is screwing us over. Look at the PA legislature; they've screwed over their budget, still taking vacations and breaks instead of hammering out a budget plan. Schools are taking out million dollar loans with one district saying they may not be able to pay teachers (with the ignorati saying, "So what? They're overpaid anyway" to do a job that you'll notice they themselves aren't willing to do; put up with other people's kids...), government offices are cutting hours, others are cutting staff and doubling up workloads. Strange enough they don't seem to accept my excuse when they want taxes and fees paid that I just didn't have it budgeted right now. Nice double standard.

Yet I've heard nothing of people complaining to their representatives. I've heard no angry protests at this dereliction of duty. No flooding them with phone calls. Worse, come election time, I'm sure plenty of these people will be reelected.

It's not that a lack of free press is necessary for democracy to work. It's the people willing to work for democracy. We've enjoyed a lot of good times and somewhere along the way we gained a sense of entitlement to ignorance that is filtering up to those who are now adults. We willingly give responsibility to think for ourselves up and allow others to think for us. Free press is worthless when the people won't read about the issues unless it's in the form of a textspeak twitterfart online and when anything over a paragraph in length is ignored.

Joel, it isn't Craigslist that threatened people's access to information and democracy. It's the laziness of the people.

But otherwise...keep up the great work, both of you (Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky)...