… In The American Commonwealth James Bryce wrote that the “appetite for ‘highly spiced’ or ‘sensational’ news, is enormous,” and journalists sometimes work in “unceasing haste.” The media, he wrote, were an “index and mirror” of public opinion. But given citizens’ current distrust in the media, and the self-selection we now employ in choosing the news source of our political predilections, one wonders if there are any organs of public opinion that citizens currently value and trust. Facebook pages? Twitter accounts? Today’s mirrors of public opinion refract and reflect what we select to consume, raising questions about how the media shape what we know and how we know it.
How then does one re-conceptualize public opinion, especially as it relates to a foreign policy terrain that can generous be described as bumpy. CONT.
Robert M. Eisinger (Roger Williams U.), Duck of Minerva