Public Forum of Dreams

"If you build it, they will come."
If journalists start the conversation, the public will join in. That's why true investigative journalism is so important. Journalists have the duty to bring stories to light that might otherwise never be told, to shake citizens out of complacency when something is wrong, and to engage the public in conversation about serious issues. As the ones responsible for getting the facts out there, the burden is especially high for reporters to dredge forth accurate and unbiased information so the public can make educated and informed decisions. If there is a marketplace of ideas available, the average citizen can both benefit from and contribute to a public forum of information.

The trade-off is Internet comments.

Of course, this is a two edged sword. If allowed to dictate the terms of the conversation, news outlets can blow issues wildly out of proportion and mislead readers or watchers with incomplete or prejudiced facts. It's important that while journalists start the news by breaking important stories, they don't also dictate its terms and control the perspective at the cost of the public.

It'd be like someone jumpstarting your car and then driving off with it.

Essentially though, the bulwark of our democracy is the voice of the people. And the people need information in order to formulate opinions, interact with society, and participate in the democratic processes that make our country the great nation it is today. So a public forum like a newspaper is essential, the journalists chronicling the news just as much so. That marketplace of ideas isn't going to build itself.

In this article, the Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger writes about the importance of a free press in engaging the public: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/06/importance-free-press-alan-rusbridger