One Reason the Media Can't Save Democracy for Us

Write about what you know, they say. Mostly I know about elections, and that’s usually what this newsletter is about.

Preserving democracy, however, involves more than just voting rights. Over time, I’ll also touch on book bans, media fragmentation, geographic self-sorting, campaign finance reform, and—today—pluralism.

The folks doing great things over at New Pluralists define pluralism as

the worldview that the coexistence of diverse opinions, ways of life, and value systems is enriching for all members of a society, and that people deserve to be recognized, respected, accepted, and engaged on the basis of their diversity.

Pluralism, they say, “accepts that citizens will have diverse material, political, and social interests.” If we want solutions to work for the greatest number people in a modern democratic society, “we must accommodate and negotiate these differences in good faith.”

That all sounds right to me. I have little doubt the reason I’ve had some success as a lawyer in progressive politics is that I grew up in a conservative area. Sure, I didn’t learn much about my future progressive clients, but I learned about people, why they hold the values they hold, how to see them for who they are, and how to identify and communicate with them—all great skills for any lawyer.

But when it comes to politics and democracy, we can’t simply let cable news and the traditional media feed us “both sides” of the issues and call ourselves pluralists.

If haven’t been glued to cable news,¹ you may have missed that NBC hired (and promptly fired) former Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel to appear as guest contributor across its networks. McDaniel, among other anti-democratic misdeeds, was a proponent of the Big Lie that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen, and she helped orchestrate fake electors for Trump’s January 6th plot.

This is not the pluralism we’re looking for.

A major flaw in the theory that the media can promote democratic values by giving airtime to both sides of an issue is that one half of the partisan equation is missing a necessary piece of pluralism: good faith. There are hardly any reliable Republicans remaining to appear on TV. They’re all election deniers and Trump sycophants.

More importantly, pursuing pluralism and protecting democracy need to be grassroots, community-based endeavors. The media alone can’t do it. Courts alone won’t do it. It’s on us.

We don’t have to watch each other’s news networks. We don’t have to listen to each other’s most extreme leaders. But we should be listening to each other. We should acknowledge some level of humanity in members of the other party, and in members of (gulp) third parties. We should understand a little bit about each others’ lives, and why we all believe what we believe.

I know I have a lot progress to make. Hopefully I, and we, figure out how to make it soon.

1. Good for you!