Democracy is fundamentally flawed

"[Walter] Lippmann, already one of the nation’s most famous journalists, argued in a best-selling book called Public Opinion that democracy was fundamentally flawed. People, he said, mostly know the world indirectly, through “pictures they make up in their heads.” And they receive these mental pictures largely through the media." - The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel

Democracy is fundamentally flawed. In his book Plato’s Republic that much is obvious – that great philosopher says nothing good about democracy. In fact, if popular interpretations are accurate he actually condemns democracy for the murder of his master Socrates. Very little has changed since those days, except everything has changed.

During 5th century Greece there was no newspapers or magazines to keep the government in check. Today, however, there are strong news agencies who are perfectly capable of keeping the government accountable – although that is slightly changing as agencies become poorer and less able to conduct investigations to keep the leviathan accountable.

People do know the world through indirect exposure. In his book Plato says so with his allegory of the cave that makes it clear: we merely see shadows and not the real things. In other words, our entire existence isn’t even real though we feel it is. No philosopher has yet to prove his own existence: Rene Descartes came close with his absurd “I think, therefore I am.” So it is mostly accurate that most of us know the world through pictures.

Because we receive these images that help us know the world through the media, it is imperative and incumbent upon news agencies to feed us images that are accurate. It is not uncommon to find images, outdated or irrelevant ones, being employed on articles that sometime sway us when they ought not to, but that is mainly our fault.

However, Lippmann probably means image in a metaphorical sense and not images as in photos – he must mean the images painted by words. The media, as Adolf Hitler said, continues to do forever what the public school system ceased doing after 12th grade.