The evolution of media and democracy. How we got here. How we might move forward.

On the paradox of free expression and its challenging impact on effective democracies and the role of journalism

We believe in a free press. We believe in free expression. We believe in democracy. We believe in a society that can and should both tolerate its differences and reach consensus on how we live together. We believe all of those things.

It turns out there’s a paradox in that. History tells us, ever more loudly, that the greater the freedom of expression, the greater the fragmentation of perspectives, the greater the difficulty in achieving consensus, and, thus, the greater the difficulty for a democracy to succeed and flourish.

Our society is fractured. Societies around the world are fractured. There are deep fissures of ethnic, religious, and economic conflict. We are in a crisis of divisiveness driven by fear of the other, by fear of the future. Some fears are justified, others are stoked for political gain.

We demonize those we disagree with. We see them as the other. We perceive and portray them through simplistic accusatory memes. In doing so, we deepen the divide, we do not bridge it.

We see a democracy that’s not holding up to it’s promise. We see less willingness to engage in constructive dialog. According to Pew, trust in government has declined from nearly 80% in the early 1960’s to 20% today. Yet more troubling, less than 20% of Americans think democracy is a good model for other countries to follow.

How did we get here? Are the challenges specific to our contemporary digital world? Are they the result of a longer trend? What has caused so many to believe democracy has failed them? Can democracies survive our modern digital age? Can democracies survive the Internet?

Democracies live or die on our ability to find common ground, to grow a shared consciousness, to consider complex issues and find compromise. Democracies break down when the motivation to achieve compromise is lost.

It did not start with the Internet, though the Internet did exponentially exacerbate the trend. At every stage of the evolution of communications technology, from the printing press to electronic media, to the Internet, there have been disruptions. As communications technology made it easier for people to express themselves, it has enabled more different points of view, and, as a result, more conflict.

Gutenberg’s printing press was as disruptive in its time as we might see the Internet today. Yes, it broadened access to information. But, it also challenged the dominant institutions of the day, whether they be the government or the church. The religious tracts of Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church and triggered the Reformation.

Like the Internet, the printing press brought the tremendous benefit of shared knowledge. Without the printing press, we would not have had the shared technical knowledge that spurred the Industrial Revolution. But, like the Internet, it was as capable of spreading falsehoods as it was of spreading fact-based knowledge. Among the early printed tracts were religion-infused diatribes against the Ottoman empire and the Muslim world. There has never been a golden era of truth.

With every progression in communications there is an expansion of voices, a fragmentation of beliefs, and an increase in both the intensity and volume of conflicting perspectives. The printing press was only the start. The modern era of electronic communication had an exponential impact on how our society operates — particularly television and then the Internet.

Seventy-five years ago, the media ecosystem in the United States was an oligopoly of a few large media outlets, three commercial networks, public broadcasting, and a few influential newspapers. They offered a selective and incomplete view of our society. Some say that homogenized view had its benefits, though voices at the margins, whether extreme or simply unheard, were largely out of view.

Marginalized voices were shunted to the unlit corners of our culture, to the small circles of a printed newsletter or a niche magazine. It was, in the eyes of some, the heyday of trusted mass media, of “Uncle” Walter Cronkite and CBS News. It is a matter of opinion whether it presented a true sense of our country’s collective psyche or was only a gauze hiding underlying cultural fractures.

Fifty years ago, cable and satellite networks fragmented the media environment further, introducing hundreds of channels of news and entertainment. Over time, it spawned more partisan news outlets, each seeking to attach themselves to a loyal target audience in a competitive marketplace.

This marked a substantial progression in the fragmentation of our society, a troubling shift toward silos of belief. The left-leaning news brand is despised by the right. The right-leaning news brand is despised by the left. Both lean toward affirmation rather than information, with fact-based coverage being drowned in a flood of opinion, or skewed through the lens of political bias.

Thirty years ago, the Internet fragmented the media ecosystem exponentially. The Internet broke the information space into a million shards, from 500 channels to more than a billion voices. It allowed many to feel heard and others to find the information and beliefs that reflect their view of their world. As society’s access to media became more open, the information space became intrinsically more diverse, and mathematically more divisive. We can choose, and do choose, the voices that reflect our view of our world, the voices that reflect and confirm our biases — good, bad, and indifferent.

We are left with a divided society that resists consensus. Our politicians focus on their core supporters with little inclination to seek compromise or accept a common set of facts. They define and contrast themselves against those they despise. Compromise is off the table.

Plato’s prediction that free expression would doom democracy to the appeal of the simple dictates of an authoritarian seems uncomfortably valid. Plato understood the paradox that a society with unrestricted freedom of expression is more susceptible to the hard-fisted demagogue who preaches a simple path forward, while spreading misinformation, inciting hatred, and undermining democratic values.

Where do we go from here?

Some hope the challenges of our information ecosystem can be solved through public policy, whether to address misinformation or copyright or privacy or cyber security. The global media research organization, the Center for News, Technology, and Information, upon whose board I sit along with the likes of Marty Baron and Maria Ressa, provides objective analysis of policy approaches from around the world that might affect the free press and the open Internet.

The challenge is that many of these policies can negatively impact the frameworks of free expression and a free press, particularly those relating to fake news, content moderation, misinformation, and disinformation.

The Internet has elevated both noble speech which appeals to our better angels, and heinous speech, where outrage and self-righteousness can foment a blind hatred of others. This bothers us. We demand it be fixed. But how? Supporting free expression requires tolerating speech we may find disagreeable, even heinous. How do we define acceptable versus unacceptable speech? Managing free expression in a free and open society is a contradiction in terms.

Too often today, many believe in free expression only to the extent it’s acceptable and agreeable to them. That’s a problem. Therefore, we must think carefully about asking governments to define free expression in a politically conflicted world — left versus right, one side in power today, the other tomorrow. How can boundaries on expression be crafted when problematic speech also comes from politicians and media? Since the political sphere spins in the atmosphere of media, we should not expect rigorous definitions of fact versus fiction, of what is awful versus lawful.

What speech do we disallow? What guidance do we give platforms of communications and amplification? What form of “fake news” policy is not potentially a tool to be misused by others in power? To what extent do such mechanisms raise the possibility of one-sided dominance versus broad discourse?

I’m not suggesting there is no need for smart policy. However, public policy offers no silver bullets to address the challenges we face. We must look at our own efforts. Let’s consider how we in the media might address the challenge. Let’s consider approaches to journalism that might guide our societies toward consensus versus divisiveness. Let’s rethink models of trustworthiness. Let’s rethink the role of an evolved journalistic entity in strengthening a community. Let’s rethink models of civic engagement that might help in tackling the challenging issues of the day.

Let’s consider the question of trust. We often say we must build “trust in journalism”. But saying we should broadly “trust in journalism” is akin to suggesting we should generally trust politicians or used car salespeople. Pew Research tells us all those professions have very low ratings of trustworthiness.

Journalism is not monolithic. It has many variations in quality, in approach, and in degree of partisanship. We may speak thoughtfully of journalistic ethics but we must acknowledge that acceptance of those principles and adherence to those ethics is neither comprehensive nor consistent. There are no applicable laws, nor should they be.

Our challenge is to evolve or create journalistic organizations that can bridge the gaps of divisiveness and create frameworks that might better lead to consensus. That means striving to gain respect from across the political spectrum. Building trust with a partisan cohort eager to hear the confirmation of their biases is easy. That’s not trust. That’s affinity. That’s blind loyalty. Building trust across chasms of divisiveness is hard. That’s called respect.

In this context, I am not a fan of partisan news organizations. By definition, a partisan outlet is aligned with a specific political movement or point-of-view. In addressing divisiveness and guiding toward consensus, partisanship can be a roadblock, not a solution.

My preferred definition of journalism is to give people the tools and information they need to be good citizens. It is not to tell people what to think, but to give them the information they need to draw their own conclusions. My ideal motto would be one that strives for objectivity: We inform. You decide.

Some question how one can be objective in such a challenged partisan world. Objectivity is not about one’s beliefs. Rather it is a rigorous process of critical thinking that pursues facts accurately and fairly, regardless of whether they align with one’s personal beliefs or political agenda. As Marty Baron suggests in his superb book, Collisions of Power, “we should expect journalists to be objective just as we as journalists demand that police and judges be objective.”

In the world of media, trust must be constantly re-earned. Recently, a thoughtful graduate student suggested we borrow from philosophy. She said let’s consider the framework of epistemic arrogance vs. epistemic humility. “Perhaps we should frame the contrast between journalists who assume they are trusted because of their profession (epistemic arrogance) and those who recognize the need to interrogate their own credibility and methods (epistemic humility).”

How do people develop trust in sources of information? There are several vectors.

First, we trust people we know and those endorsed by people we know. It’s a social construct, good, bad, or indifferent. We trust people who are more like us, in one way or another. We are tribal. If the head of the tribe says the moon is green, I’ll say yes, to be sure I get a leg of the calf at dinner. Trust is a social construct.

Second, people put trust in institutions. The church. A government. A charismatic leader. A specific news source. But trust in institutions can deteriorate and shift.

Third, we build trust through what we call information architecture. Academic and scientific journals are more trusted because of their reinforcing information architecture. Each article features a fact-based narrative, footnoting, data transparency, and peer review.

Wikipedia, like encyclopedias before it, has a rigid architecture of referencing and a refined approach to a fact-based narrative. These architectures evolved over time to address challenges of veracity and trust. They explain an entity’s principles and objectives through the structure of its work.

Maybe we should consider whether the information architecture of legacy journalism is serving today’s mission. At the macro level, the information architecture of a news brand, like the New York Times or the Washington Post, features a mix of fact-based journalism surrounded by ever more opinion. Some news brands continue to make political endorsements. This architecture of objective fact-based journalism packaged with partisan expression seems rather counterproductive. We cannot expect broad-based trust in fact-based journalism if it is surrounded by opinion pieces that suggest otherwise.

Let’s rethink the information architecture of the article itself, of the atomic unit of fact-based journalism, to better reinforce the factual nature of the work, reduce the perception of bias, and respect the audience we think should respect us.

Let’s also consider our use of language. Janet Coats is a linguistics researcher and managing director of the Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology at the University of Florida. Her research on the coverage of the George Floyd protests found the verbs used to describe protest actions repeatedly drew comparisons to fire or destruction, such as spark, fuel, erupt, trigger, ignite. Professor Coats poses the question: is the recurrent use of this fiery language a deliberate choice, or is it a subconscious pattern when covering such stories? What impact does that have on the perception of political demonstrations and of the people participating in them? How might that fuel partisan divide?

Language matters. Linguistics matters. Politicians know this. They spend lavishly on message testing to understand precisely which words and phrases will stimulate the desired response, be it hope or fear.

We, in the world of journalism, must also study linguistics. We should assess the impact of the terms and phrases we use. We must consider the impact of amplifying the false memes and spin propagated by the politicians we cover.

Let’s consider the importance of context. We live in a landscape of distorted risk. We often vote with unfounded fears of terrorism, crime, or whatever ills the body politic is inclined to make us fear. We fear terrorism despite the fact we are 11,000 times more likely to die of heart disease. We fear crime when we are 28 times more likely to die in a car accident.

Errors in context can be more dangerous than errors in fact. The lack of context may be an unconscious oversight in the blur of “breaking” news. “It bleeds it leads” as news people often say. However, there are cases that are not unconscious but fear mongering. Either way, incautious coverage, absent of fact-based context, is a form of misinformation. We need to close the gap between irrational and rational fear. We must provide more thoughtful context.

I recently revisited the work of Robert Putnam. Putnam has researched the connection between effective governance and community engagement for five decades. He began his work in Italy, which in 1975 shifted power from the central government to the provinces. He found that the strongest corollary with effective governance was community engagement.

Basically, people in regions of ineffective governance were not joining clubs, they weren’t going on picnics or joining bowling leagues. They weren’t getting to know people who were different from them. They weren’t building a shared reality. They weren’t building social capital.

This is the result of many factors: the rise of television, increased suburbanization, the impact of technology and the Internet. The result is increased isolation, a narrowing of empathy, a reduction in common interest. Without community and real world social engagement we are not exposed to the diversity of our communities. We lose the opportunity to understand the challenges and the attributes of people who are not like us. If we don’t engage with the other, with those who are not like us, we become more vulnerable to perceiving the other from an isolated, removed, silo of fear.

Our greatest opportunity may be at the community level, by rethinking the role of a community news organization as a community platform suited to our modern digital world.

First, its explicit mission would be to strengthen the community, to both address the community’s information needs and create opportunities for engagement. In seeking to bring the diversity of a community together, it would also strive to be assiduously apolitical. Again, we inform, you decide.

Second, it would celebrate the community’s hopes and dreams, giving focus to its successes, to examples of civic empathy, as well as being the watchdog for misbehavior.

It would purposely address the community’s broad information needs — community events, local sports, the progression of life from birth to obituary. It would leverage topics of community interest that aren’t controversial. A recent mega-study coordinated by Stanford University determined the best method of addressing divisiveness is to engage the community on non-controversial subjects. This can help unify a community and build the trust necessary to address more difficult topics.

We see accountability journalism as the priority, to ferret out corruption, to expose criminal behavior. It is critical. But the audience for serious accountability journalism is small, in the low single digits. By addressing a community’s comprehensive information needs with service journalism, we can provide value to the community and gain exponentially higher engagement. This both drives the business model and increases the impact of accountability journalism by exposing it to those who might not seek it out.

Last, it would seek any and all methods to drive the community to engage with each other, both virtually and in the real world. Might the 60-year decline in social engagement which Putnam reports be addressed by renewed approaches to local media? Can we recast local news as an engagement architecture that helps enable a shared consciousness, that helps build social capital.

What I’ve outlined is not just an idea. There are organizations that are implementing and succeeding with such models. I see Cityside in several communities in California, and CityNews in Italy. Another is a publisher in Canada called Village Media, which has established itself in nearly thirty communities ranging from Sault Ste Marie to downtown Toronto.

Village has proven that such models can be self-sustaining, indeed profitable, and without a subscription paywall. It has recognized the value of advertising both as a source of merchant information for the community and as the lifeblood of the local economy. A recent study by the Medill School of Journalism reported that the primary motivation cited by citizens for consuming local news was to save money. Yes, knowing what’s on offer from local merchants is useful and valuable to the community.

While the digital ad markets are extraordinarily effective at connecting a custom furniture business with customers in far-flung markets, the community platform can address the needs of local organizations and businesses to engage with the communities they serve. Local news may never be the “license to print money” that it was once claimed to be, but it can be a viable, sustainable, and influential business in a community.

Village Media and Maria Ressa’s Rappler are innovating further with community engagement platforms. Rappler has created Rappler Communities and Village has launched a community social network called Spaces. Spaces enables members to connect on carefully-curated topics of community interest. You might think of it as a carefully programmed and moderated Next Door. To shift away from toxicity and toward civility, Spaces emphasizes non-controversial topics. Yes, let’s create a Space for making sushi and one back-country skiing, no to the neighborhood watch where a dark hoodie is seen as an intrinsic source of fear. Spaces looks to build connections between virtual discussion and real-world engagement. The local brew-pub can host the monthly meetups of the local woodworking group. The local YMCA can host a Space for their members.

The objective? Stimulate the community engagement that Robert Putnam shows is so important to effective governance. Build social capital.

Let’s take this a step further.

Might we try new models of consensus building? Lawrence Lessig notes that democracies were not always electoral. Indeed, there is a body of thought from Montesquieu, Rousseau and others that models of electoral representation have their weaknesses. In a polarized world they can lead toward autocracy and away from democracy, or what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority”. That seems plausible in a modern us-versus-them political environment of forever-campaigning and unlimited financial contributions.

An alternate approach, used in Athens and in the French republics, was sortition. These were randomly-selected citizen assemblies that deliberated on the challenging questions of the times. While not perfect, they were more representative of a society’s diversity and less distorted by contemporary electoral politics. There are compelling efforts in Europe, like the Bürgerrat Demokratie in Germany, and the citizen assemblies of Ireland, to collaborate on complex issues such as same-sex marriage and climate change. Might such models of deliberative consensus be useful today, if only as a supplement to representative democracies?

Let’s take that idea of citizen assemblies and map it against a community engagement platform like Village Media’s Spaces. Might that framework, along with a greater degree of community trust, support the hosting of virtual and real world citizen assemblies on the controversial topics a community faces?

The answers to our challenges are complex and nuanced. There are answers, IF we step back and rethink the models from every dimension. The answers will require thoughtful leaders in every sector — media, technology, academia, and politics — to be role models. Leaders with a more principled view of the common good. Leaders who can drive consensus about what IS the common good.

Changing the nature of societal engagement will require the leadership of many. It cannot and will not be solved by any singular action. As troubled as we might be about the state of our world, it is critical we make every effort to identify and advance thoughtful solutions, whether small or big, whether simple or audacious.

I do have confidence in our future. There are constructive paths forward. There are workable solutions. We need to push them as far as they can go.

As leaders in our domains, whether me or you, whether the head of a big company or the editor of a high school newspaper, it is critical we identify constructive paths forward. It is critical we lead with all the optimism and passion we can muster.

Richard Gingras has walked the bleeding edge from satellite networks to news products to search engines, from PBS to Apple to Excite to Salon to Google. In sharing his personal perspectives, he knows innovation is hard. He concedes he’s made more mistakes than you.

Gingras serves on the boards of the Center for News, Technology, and Innovation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the International Center for Journalists, the First Amendment Coalition, the James W Foley Legacy Foundation, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, and PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Gingras served for many years as global vice president of news at Google focusing on how Google surfaced news on Google’s consumer services and on Google’s efforts to enable a healthy, open ecosystem for quality journalism. He continues as a Senior Advisor.