Josh Imhof | staff writer
“Democracy dies in darkness.”
That is the phrase made famous by The Washington Post when they adopted it as their slogan in 2017. According to The Post, the phrase was popularized by journalist Bob Woodward, who, along with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate scandal which led to former President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
Woodward used the phrase in a 2007 article criticizing government secrecy; the point being that Democracy relies on government transparency and an informed citizenry.
The 21st century has seen people gain greater access to information than any other period in time. The internet has provided people with access to millions upon millions of websites, articles and books.
Despite easy access to information, Americans seem woefully ignorant on topics that directly affect them, from local zoning laws to policies that affect homeless people.
According to a 2024 study published by Pew Research Center, the number of Americans following local news is down, with only 22% saying they closely follow local news – a 15% drop from 2016.
A separate study from Pew claims that fewer Americans are following news in general, with only 38% of adults saying they follow the news all or most of the time compared to 51% in 2016.
Pew noted that this change comes amid changes in news consumption habits, declining trust in media and high levels of news fatigue.
This change follows a nearly two decade long decline in local media. According to Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers, as of last year, with the yearly loss of local newspapers ticking up to an average of 2.5 per week.
This as more Americans say they are consuming news through social media, a platform synonymous with declining attention spans and misinformation.
We’re slowly becoming a nation of doom scrollers, less concerned with properly informing ourselves and more interested in indulging in comfortable, easy to digest media.
“I think we’ve all seen in just the last four years with lockdowns, how much those affected our lives,” said Clifford Bob, chair of the political science department at Duquesne University. “Increasingly we’re seeing some of the people who promoted these lockdowns admitting under oath that they really didn’t have a good basis for quite a number of the policies that they put out there.”
Bob said that there is a need for Americans to look beyond surface level information and seriously analyze the news.
“I grew up in the Vietnam era. I wasn’t draft age, but I do remember people being sent off to war and dying in large numbers,” he said. “It turns out, if you read the Pentagon Papers, which were produced in the 1960s, that our leaders knew in the mid-1960s that the war was unwinnable, yet they kept going with it. That suggests you need to go beyond what the mainstream media reports, beyond what our leaders claim and try to get as close to reality and truth as you can.”
In situations like these, it is not always possible to be completely informed, especially when leaders are misleading the public.
Future President Ronald Reagan even said in 1965 that “It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.”
Because of the narrative created by the government, the Pentagon Papers had to be leaked to the press in order for the information within them to become public. Even after these leaks, the reports were incomplete and it took until 2011, 40 years later, for the full documents to become available.
Despite this, it is still crucial to examine all the data that is available to make as informed of an opinion as possible.
The uneducated and the uninformed are much more easily taken advantage of. Learning as much as possible about these topics creates a strong foundational understanding so that people can use their own instincts and experiences to create opinions.
This way, once more information comes out, they are not completely in the dark.
This need to dig deeper goes beyond national politics and into the local.
“[We’re] a country in which we have multiple levels of government. Often things that are taking place on a local or state level are every bit as important as what’s happening in Washington,” Bob said.
In May, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s administration refused to cooperate with the city’s independent fiscal watchdog in her probe of questionable payments to a contractor, according to an article by the Tribune-Review.
It was revealed that payments to the independent contractor, Mario Ashkar, totaled almost $23,000, more than the $18,460 that reports originally indicated. It was also revealed that Ashkar was getting paid under the table via PayPal rather than through city checks.
Local governments are responsible for the day-to-day quality of life for the residents they represent. They oversee local courts, transportation, construction, EMS, police, fire and housing. All of these elements are crucial to a community’s well-being. One of these elements faltering can mean strain on another.
A lack of housing can lead to more crime which will put a strain on police and EMS. If there is poorly planned construction this will put a strain on public transportation. These are problems that you or someone you love will certainly feel the effects of, so educating yourself and learning where you stand is important. This will allow you to participate and elect officials you feel will effectively balance all of the responsibilities of the local government.
Maintaining democracy is not easy. It is a job that requires the citizens of a country to be well informed, a task which is getting harder as local newspapers shutter and social media takes over the news distribution. The idea of democracy relies on the willingness and ability of people to advocate for themselves and their neighbors. Start small and learn about what is important to you. Use the resources you have worked so hard to be granted and take advantage of the time that you have to learn from them. Don’t let them go to waste. Don’t let democracy die in darkness.