For three centuries, much of American political deliberation occurred in small meeting rooms and town halls. Policy issues were debated face to face. Newspapers, flyers, and magazines were the only “mass media.” However, the development of television and radio in the early twentieth century, and the advent of the Internet later in the century, has increasingly swamped the public with news. As a result, the future of democracy may be influenced by the way the media choose to inform the American public and by the way public officials use the media. In his book Who Deliberates" Benjamin I. Page writes that “even if the public is capable of a high level of rationality and good sense, public opinion is bound to depend, in good part, upon the political information and ideas that are conveyed to it.”

Many...