Chapter 7, The Media, Democracy's Guardian Angel Summary and Analysis

The free press is required for a functioning democracy. It informs the public on relevant issues that help it promote the common good. They have stopped doing this. Instead, they focus on far more trivial issues. The media should provide context, access and insight, monitor the government and determine who is helping the people and who is hurting it. The aim is transparency, giving citizens the truth. The press has surpassed the status imagined by the Founding Fathers. It is now an entertainment system.

The media was most important in the American Revolution. But then the only forms of media were the town crier and the pamphlet. The town crier delivered immediate messages and the pamphlet encouraged detailed thinking about an issue. For instance, the most famous pamphleteer of the revolutionary days was Thomas Paine...