In a shallow pool

Adams’ vision undermined

In a guest column published on this page earlier this month, Richard S. Drake examined the importance of newspapers in our society and reminded us (with a John Adams quote) that “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”

The quote is from Adams’ pre-Revolutionary 1765 work, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, and there is more to it. After “among the people,” and a reference linking the creator to our desire to know, the quote continues as follows:

“… but besides this, they [the people] have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

The latter portion of this quote confirms that by “general knowledge,” Adams meant general political knowledge.

Clearly, Adams was making two points: (1) People need to know what generally is occurring politically in their society to prevent loss of liberty (as one of the founding fathers, Adams was all about politics); and (2) people have a right to know more about their leaders than what is contained in political slogans.

Toward his first point, it is helpful to consider what media scholars call “the shared pool of information,” which refers to the knowledge most people have in common. That pool, however, became much less sophisticated and less widespread as media outlets expanded after 1950.

For example, TV stations and FM radio stations multiplied between 1950 and 1980, and communities no longer were limited to just a few electronic media choices. In the same period, general-interest magazines such as Life and The Saturday Evening Post lost circulation to special-interest magazines that stole their audiences. In addition, from 1995-2010, Internet access expanded exponentially, computers became affordable for the average family, and social media were born.

As a result, access to information outlets diversified to the point at which current events knowledge was much more segmented than it was in 1950, when people across the country watched the same two or three TV networks, bought the same magazines and read the same news-service articles in their local newspapers.

Consequently, many citizens came to know increasingly more about esoteric topics that interested them than they knew about politics in general; to a great extent, the shared pool of information evaporated and shifted mightily from self-governance to entertainment.

Toward Adams’ second point, which he made two centuries before questionable behavior concerning our presidents’ personal lives emerged from the shadows and became real-time news, media outlets now have the ability to instantaneously expose politicians as the characters they really are.

Sometimes such exposure doesn’t matter, and sometimes it even angers portions of the electorate. Media exposure of Bill Clinton’s extracurricular activities and media criticisms of Ronald Reagan’s forgetfulness come to mind.

Overall, Adams thought that by maintaining a general knowledge of the political landscape and considering the character and conduct of politicians, voters could protect themselves both from losing their liberty and from electing rulers with questionable morals and abilities.

Unfortunately, the explosion of media outlets has undermined Adams’ vision, as exemplified by the 2016 presidential campaign and its outcome.

In fact, if most voters had followed Adams’ advice last November, a different Republican might have been elected president.