Television’s Anti-politics: Surveying the Wasteland

Democratic politics in the world’s oldest democracy is losing popular appeal. Public cynicism about what government, or politics, can accomplish is rampant. American voting turnout has been declining for decades, though with occasional upticks. At the same time, Americans are overwhelmed with imagery and information. What is the relation, if any, between the scandalous obsessions of American news media and the glut of entertainment, on the one hand, and the declining participation and rising demagoguery in American politics?

For more than a decade, American news media have been roundly and loudly criticized for degrading politics. Since 1980, many painstaking empirical studies have established that the principal subject cove...