This piece is the tenth and final installment of a biweekly series written by David A. Foster (Center bias), based on his new book, Moderates of the World, Unite! Read the first post in the series.
As Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing have argued, democracy is inherently messy. This is neither a feature nor a bug; it just can’t avoid being that way. Take, for example, current proposals for the Fourth Estate by the newly-appointed head of the FCC.
Brendan Carr promises to dismantle the tech and mainstream media cartels, and has even teased the idea of revoking NBC’s license. So as to eliminate wokeness, to compel free speech on tech platforms, and to do whatever else the president asks. Messy, indeed!
Yet, does Carr have a point? Social media has deranged public discourse. Mainstream media has become a pale shadow of its former self: vanished revenue has forced it to push partisan division just to survive. Perhaps it should be dismantled. Or, regulated.
Meanwhile, some hold out for “independent” media (e.g. YouTube channels, podcasts) as a savior. But independent media also caters to partisan audiences and has the same algorithm-chasing incentives. And the impact on democracy of scholarly blogs, sadly, is negligible.
Media policy might actually be a good issue to work on during the next administration. There is much common ground across the public political spectrum:
- No one wants censorship
- Everyone (excepting, perhaps, propagandists and media/tech shareholders) wants constructive, informative public discourse
- No citizen ever voted for the corporate “personhood” grant of First Amendment privileges
- Most Americans are turned off by the endless political media circus, and
- People want government to accomplish things (even if it’s currently done “inefficiently”)
But no one knows what media policies to want. New communication technologies have come at our society much faster than we could humanly process. We’ve been sucker-punched.
It is a historical crisis, and we must remind ourselves how rapidly it came.
As discussed in prior articles in this series, cable news and the internet have fragmented audiences, and tech platforms have destroyed the business model for journalism. Millions of voices now generate a cacophony in the public sphere, propagandists find it easy to exploit the new environment, and outrage is pushed. News finds us (rather than vice versa), and censorship (as even the Communist Party of China knows) is basically impossible. First Amendment jurisprudence is now operating with an obsolete logic.
The effect has been a debilitating national polarization that has made Congress almost non-functional. Immigration law reform has repeatedly proved to be impossible. Climate action, budget process, health care costs, defense spending, industrial revitalization—generally impossible. Media policy is what we call a “linchpin issue.” We need it to catch up to our situation, and quickly.
Engineering the Remedies
To cut through this madness, we need leaders who understand how media, social media, and generative AI are impacting society. Who understand that the medium is the message. That citizens are busy and distracted and easily manipulated. And that, whatever positives have come from innovations in media and tech, so far they are swamped over by the negatives.
What’s required are system-level reforms and initiatives. Addressing polarization by teaching citizens to talk more civilly with each other is intrinsically valuable, but it is pushing on a string. As an analogy, one approach to taming inflation would be to persuade all businesses not to raise prices. Instead, we apply a system-level solution: the Fed raises interest rates.
Plainly, though, this project is too much for today’s politicians to take on. And so a preparatory step must be designed: an initiative that patiently develops a broad, educated constituency for reform. A constituency that is properly and knowledgeably disgusted with our current information environment, and that knows what specific policies, initiatives, and reforms will rescue us.
But media is a complex topic that should not be underestimated. The first target must be college students, and the second the general public. Here are key priorities:
- The education must be nationally scalable.
- It must utilize the most powerful interactive technologies available, including video animation and LLM-powered personalization and dynamic coaching.
- It must also apply modern curriculum design and instructional design techniques, including audience analysis, learning by doing, and clear learning objectives.
- The development team must be interdisciplinary, including experts in:
- journalism
- media technologies
- political science
- First Amendment law
- propaganda/rhetoric
- social psychology
- and related areas.
- The curriculum must provide a positive vision for feasible, specific change.
A vision for change could include some of the proposals I’ve detailed in this series, and it would certainly include others. It might also include a broader reevaluation of the function of the Fourth Estate in the Internet Age, including a shift from a news-centered paradigm (focused on the weekly spectacle) to a learning-centered paradigm.
Again, with a topic this complex, an extra effort is needed to develop learning resources that are up to the task. And it will require focused collaboration by leaders who understand the urgency of the problem and are determined to fix it.
Back to a Government that Works
Fixing public discourse would not of course eliminate the messiness of democracy. That doesn’t, though, absolve us of the responsibility to limit the most debilitating kinds of messiness. Our country needs a government that works. Never a government that can trample individual rights, or that expands into ever-larger bureaucracies, or that encumbers the private sector. But rather, a government that simply can make rational decisions and implement them.
Polarization leads to wild policy agenda swings with each new administration, and it cripples the branch of government that was designed by the Founders for forging compromise. Chaos in the public sphere cedes control of our government to the rich and powerful, rather than serving the people.
For the next few months, obviously, the national public discussion is going to be everything Trump. But the causes and problems predate Trump, and, if nothing is done, will persist long after he exits the scene.
Thanks to Brendan Carr and Donald Trump, the media environment is bound to be a major topic of debate. Perhaps the new administration is the perfect opportunity to amp up public discussion about the historical crisis that has blindsided our society. And perhaps Republicans, in partnership with Democratic lawmakers, will seize the opportunity to discuss the root causes of the dysfunction, and to enact far-sighted reforms and initiatives.
And perhaps I am being overly fair-minded as to how principled Carr’s interests in reform may be. It remains to be seen. Regardless, I do think he has a point. The current system needs change.
Read the rest of the series: