The IOP’s “Informed Citizenry” Panel: A Confused Blueprint for Progressive Media Control

On October 16, at the Institute of Politics, Professor Jill Lepore, the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Professor of Law, hosted Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio, Jameel Jaffer of Columbia Law School’s Knight’s First Amendment Institute, and David French of the New York Times. Part of a series celebrating America’s semiquincentennial, this talk was titled “A Well-Informed Citizenry.” Yet, the persistent indecision, if not self-contradiction, of each of the three panelists would have made one think it was they, and not the citizenry, who needed to be concerned about being well-informed.

Inskeep opened the conversation by giving an account of media in the time of “scarcity” — namely, when print media was the only form of news media available to most people. According to his account, what defined news during that era, and what has been lost now, is printed speeches and other items in full, even (and especially) if the editors thought the content thereof was “horrible,” which allowed audiences to make determinations for themselves. This was “more valuable” than the media’s current modus operandi, which is instead to disseminate “the clip of the most idiotic thing that was said or something that wasn’t even said” to provoke a gut reaction.

On the topic of giving audiences the whole picture, Inskeep later lamented that many in middle America are unable to make sound political determinations because the government is too complex for them to properly assign blame for government failures, blaming his “industry as a whole, because it is sometimes actually hard work to figure out who is responsible for the thing the government did.” NPR, Inskeep’s employer, is a great example of exactly this oversimplifying failure. Over the past few years, the broadcaster has effectively determined that all sin originates in our President rather than any other element of the government. It is understandably hard, then, for its listeners to pin the tail on the right donkey: they have been given infinitely many tails, but only one ass.