i spend a lot of time thinking about this, but i have never seen it summed up so well as it was in the 30's in the debate positions established by John Dewey and Walter Lippman, which i thought i would share (c/o Wikipedia):

In The Public and its Problems, Dewey presents a rebuttal to Walter Lippmann's treatise on the role of journalism in democracy. Lippmann's model was a basic transmission model in which journalists took information given to them by experts and elites, repackaged that information in simple terms, and transmitted the information to the public, whose role was to react emotionally to the news. In his model, Lippmann supposed that the public was incapable of thought or action, and that all thought and action should be left to the experts and elites.

Dewey refutes this model by assuming that politics is the work and duty of each individual in the course of his daily routine. The knowledge needed to be involved in politics, in this model, was to be generated by the interaction of citizens, elites, experts, through the mediation and facilitation of journalism. In this model, not just the government is accountable, but the citizens, experts, and other actors as well.

Maybe you should be a journalist, mac. Start your own underground newspaper. You'd be good at it. Informed positions, without pressure from anyone to conform.

I just dunno. So far the journalists at Fox News, Rush and Glenn do a fine job getting me through the day without all that interlektual humbug.

Lippman's model is the path to propaganda as news. It's the model employed by the likes of Fox News, The CONservative Party of Canada, and Tea Party Republicans.

It's where Izvestia (sp?) got its model.

can you, for ONCE, make a serious post, jab?

That's a tough one but I'm sure one of these days I will take something in this country serious again.

I totally get that. I really do.

that would be great if my point had anything to do with the USA. it really doesn't. it has to do with Democracy, and the role of the media therin.

so unless you have up and moved extra-terrestrially, jab- this thread is your big moment to respond with a grain of seriousness. unless you have simply lost the capacity.

I'm having a hard time to find much of a Lippmann type media where I come from.

it is the only kind i can find.