An Enlightened Citizenry is Indispensable

"The writings of Jefferson and Madison attest to the distinct social function of the free press. Jefferson, in particular, saw freedom of the press as the foundation of popular democracy and as protection against elite rule. "If once they [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs," he wrote his friend Edward Carrington, "you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves." Ironically, Jefferson's letter to Carrington is sometimes taken as arguing that the government should let private interests rule the press and let the chips fall where they may. Here is the most cited passage, but I include the follow-up sentence, which is sometimes omitted. "The basis of our governments being the opinion of people," Jefferson wrote, "the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them." The implication of this final sentence is that it is not enough to negatively protect the press system. Active promotion is necessary to ensure universal distribution of public information to competent citizens. In other words, the public's right to hear a variety of voices and properly digest their messages is the central platform of a democracy. On another occasion, Jefferson remarked, "An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic." As Madison famously put it, "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a tragedy or perhaps both." And such a free press, they argued, came as the result of explicit government policies and subsidies that would create; to think otherwise was nonsensical." McChesney p29
"The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century"