Peabody lecturer: Universities, journalism at crux of democracy
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By Matt Weeks
mweeks@uga.edu
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Universities, the press and self-checking government agencies play a crucial role in protecting American democracy by moderating discussion, said Michael Schudson, a renowned journalism professor and author, at the inaugural Peabody-Smithgall Lecture.
Schudson, a professor at Columbia University and the University of California, San Diego, delivered the lecture Nov. 1 at the Chapel. The address, the first of an annual series sponsored by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, was supported with funds of the Lambdin Kay Chair in the George Foster Peabody Awards program.
During his lecture, Schudson explored the intersection between universities, government and the press, which he termed “moderators of public life.”
“Public life is more than what takes place in the legislature,” he said. “It is also civil society, the large domain that exists outside of private family life and outside the realms of authoritative government, (what used to be confined to) taverns and coffee houses.”
The first key to preserving and maintaining freedom, Schudson said, came as procedural rules that governed public discourse. When the Founding Fathers convened the Continental Congress, the first acts they carried out were the appointment of a moderator and the establishment of a committee to set rules for debate and proceedings.
Without guidelines to ensure that meetings moved forward, and did so civilly, our government would have been reduced to chaotic squabbling, he said.
“Public life is not supposed to be a bull session. Democracy is not a freely voiced town square,” he said.
Universities, said Schudson, have always been “models for public life,” both by their actions and by the debates taking place inside them.
As universities matured and protected more academic and civil freedoms and the press began to question authority, instead of blindly supporting and hoping to influence them, pillars of freedom began to emerge, Schudson said.
Just as universities matured, so did journalism. Initially a means of conveying (and usually influencing) government action, as the Vietnam War and other events took shape, the press transformed itself into the fourth estate, still intertwined with government, but not at its beck and call, Schudson said.
Compounded with that came governmental self-checking with agencies such as the Government Accountability Office. Furthermore, republican democracy is safeguarded against abuses by power-hungry politicians. Or it should be. Schudson conceded the glaring counter example to his lecture. Alluding to diminished civil liberties under the current federal administration, he cautioned that “All this can be cancelled out when people with contempt for facts are in the seats of power.” |
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