Journalism and Democracy

           Scott Pelley, CBS Evening News anchor, has recently mentioned that "there is no democracy without journalism...If we lose good journalism, America will lose its vitality in the world." In this quote, Pelley means to say that without journalists reporting truths to the public, the people would not be able to have any effect on how the U.S. is run, and America would eventually fall from its world-famous pedestal.

           Reporting and democracy are linked in different ways. Reporting is defined as telling, either by word of mouth or by written account, about what one has heard, seen, done, or investigated, and journalism is, in essence, reporting stories. Democracy, on the other hand, is defined as a system of government by the country's public, typically through elected representatives. One way these terms are linked is that reporters inform the public of the news and keep them aware of the facts, allowing the public to form opinions on what must be done about the subject matter. Without being truthfully informed, the public would not know if anything was amiss, and they may vote for a candidate they thought to be a different sort of person, or they may not act upon an injustice they did not know about. Without reporters, the people would not know what is going on in their own country, and, therefore, they could not take any form form of action through democracy to make a change. Another way that reporting and democracy are linked is through the freedom of speech. Being part of a democracy means that people have the right to express their thoughts and opinions. Reporters are the epitome of the freedom of speech, for they tell others what is going on and what they think it means, and, oftentimes, what they think should be done. If reporters were repressed in any way, the freedom of speech would be violated; therefore, the presence of reporters is a blatant sign that a democracy stands.

           Pelley suggests that we cannot have journalism without democracy or democracy without journalism because the two are so delicately entwined. If journalism was not present at all, the people would not be part of a democracy, for in a democracy, all voices may be heard. If the country was not a democracy, journalism would most certainly be either illegal or highly censored by the government, for seeing as journalists speak their mind and spread the truth, there would most certainly be certain truths a government would not want its people to be aware of. For these reasons, journalism and democracy cannot exist without the other.