| This study traces the history of the idea that it is the function of the press to inform the public. Rather than assuming at the outset a public that requires a press to stay informed, the study examines the historical conditions which create a public that is dependent on newspapers. It then asks how those conditions have changed in a modern communication environment, and whether the notion of an "informed public" is therefore still relevant. Much of the study is concerned with the factors other than the information the press provides which bear on the problem of "informing the public." These include the competition for attention among different communicators, many of whom have goals antithetical to those of the press; the size and scale of the problems a modern public must understand; the way in which the audiences for the press are structured as social (and para-social) units; the privatizing effects of the mass media; and the limitations of news as a symbol system. The ideas of Walter Lippmann and John Dewey on the press and public opinion are used to inquire into the nature of a modern public and its relationship to the press. The study concludes with an analysis of the mythology surrounding the idea of an informed public, much of which, the study contends, has been sponsored by the profession of journalism. |
