Democracy in our Media?

At first, hearing the words democracy and media, I would assume many people would think there is little to no connection between the two words. In recent years, the media has seen a loss of democratic values. No longer is there a structure to showing issues and there is a constant lack of democratic debate in which newscasts watchers can think critically for themselves rather than absorb the thoughts of the news anchors and their distorted facts.

Michael Sandel, expert in democracy and politics believes that, "we too rarely articulate and defend and argue many political questions in politics." The current problem with the media is that it is incredibly polarized in the status quo. A major reason for this is due to the downfall of democratic practices throughout the media. With a lack of democratic practices, Americans don't get to think for themselves. If all the TV that Americans watch is polarized with left or right wing bias, then they too will become polarized in their political bias. This leads to not only increased political polarization but it will create a downward spiral affect with American politics and media both becoming more and more split and a lack of bipartisanship.

In 2013, the United States was voted as the thirty-second out of one hundred seventy-nine most democratic medias according to a Reporters Without Borders index study (“Freedom Index” 2014). The study took into account issues, “ranging from legislation to violence against journalists, democratic countries occupy the top of the index while dictatorial countries occupy the last three positions”. It is fairly easy to see that the United States’ media isn’t the most democratic in the world, and it isn’t even close to the top.