In an interesting talk yesterday, Steven Waldman drew attention to a study of the changing news environment in Baltimore, MD conducted by The Pew Research Center. In that city, the number of news outlets has proliferated to 53 “radio talk shows, … blogs, specialized new outlets, new media sites, TV stations, radio news programs, newspapers and their various legacy media websites.”  But the number of reporters has fallen–fast. That means that there is more written and spoken text about the news, but it is highly repetitive. A search of six major news topics found that 83% of the articles and blog posts repeated the same material–perhaps sometimes with commentary–and more than half of the original text came from paid print media such as the Baltimore Sun.

Because the Sun and the local TV stations have cut reporters, they produce many fewer articles than they did ten years ago. They also have smaller budgets for what is called “enterprise reporting” (digging to find new information not already in the public domain). This trend has the somewhat surprising result that city governments and other official institutions now have more, rather than less, control over the news.

As news is posted faster, often with little enterprise reporting added, the official version of events is becoming more important. We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such.

You might think that with 53 news outlets in a city like Baltimore, the news environment would have become more diverse and free. But if most of the text in these news outlets comes verbatim from government press releases, the public sphere is actually weaker. It’s not much help if many of the 53 outlets adopt critical, skeptical, or even hostile editorial stances. They are still allowing the government to set the agenda and define the facts. They are just adding some commentary.

(In DC briefly for a Kettering Board meeting) This is how Katharine Q. Seelye begins her introductory profile of presidential candidate Rick Santorum in the New York Times:

Exasperation crept into Rick Santorum’s voice when he was asked the other day how he planned to win the Republican nomination for president in 2012 after having lost his last election as senator from Pennsylvania by more than 17 points in 2006.

Rather than discuss his strategy, he critiqued the question.

We readers are potential voters. If the Times chooses to write about Sen. Santorum at all, it should tell us what he has done, what he proposes, and what he believes, so that we can consider voting for or against him. Instead, the entire Times profile is about Sen. Santorum’s low chances of winning the nomination, and his “exasperation” at being asked whether he realizes that he will inevitably lose.

This kind of story can be a self-fulfilling prophesy, depriving voters of a choice. At a minimum, the Times misses a chance to inform the public and support a discussion of the candidates and issues. To be clear: I wouldn’t vote for Rick Santorum in a million years. But that is because I think I know what he believes, and I disagree with it. I could be wrong, which is why I read the newspaper. The job of reporters is to help us form and check our views.

This kind of profile, by the way, is a quadrennial ritual in the Times and other newspapers. I remember a very similar treatment of Sen. Lamar Alexander, who managed to interject that he wanted to run on the ideal of “civil society,” in the midst of an article about how he could never raise enough money to be competitive. We never found out what he meant by “civil society” or whether it was a good idea.

E.J. Dionne describes a recent letter from Catholic professors to Speaker John Boehnher as “civil.” I think that’s right–in a specific and important sense. Note that the letter is deeply critical. For example:

Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.

Those are harsh words. A practicing Catholic like Mr. Boehner should prefer to be called insulting names than to be told that his record is directly contrary to the ancient and consistent magisterium (teaching authority) of the one true Church.

In what sense, then, is the letter “civil”? I think civility’s core value is the attempt to maintain a conversation, to invite a reply from which one might learn and then reply in turn. A civil interlocutor acknowledges that the other person is worthy of engaging and might have something valuable to say. Not everyone is worthy of engaging; civility is not a transcendent virtue–but it has an important place in a democratic society.

So defined, civility is consistent with sharp criticism. It all depends on the context: sometimes you have to be polite or even nice to keep a conversation going; but sometimes a harsh accusation is more effective. The question is whether you are likely to shut down or open up a conversation.

The Catholic academics’ letter explicitly welcomes further dialogue with Mr. Boehner and gives him openings to respond. It begins:

We congratulate you on the occasion of your commencement address to The Catholic University of America. It is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to recognize (whether out of a lack of awareness or dissent) important aspects of Catholic teaching. We write in the hope that this visit will reawaken your familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance.

Not only does this letter acknowledge Mr. Boehner’s standing to speak at Catholic University, but it invites him to “dissent” and explain why his position on the federal budget does not contradict the Church “on matters of faith and morals.”

Dionne notes that the letter drew hardly any media attention, in contrast to the protests at Notre Dame against President Obama’s visit in 2009. There could be several reasons for this difference, including the higher profile of a president. But Mr. Boehner is the leader of the national Republican Party and a Catholic, which makes his argument with Catholic theologians arguably more interesting than anti-abortion protests at Notre Dame.

I agree with Dionne that the recent letter was ignored because of its civility. If you say, “John Boehner must not speak at our institution; we do not want to hear him,” that is news. (Attempting to block a scheduled campus speaker follows a well-known news script.) If you say, “John Boehner is welcome to speak at our campus, but his actions violate two thousand years of theological consensus,” the press yawns. Perhaps the substance is too hard for reporters to grasp, or it sounds like just another debate about abstract ideas. In any case, we must find ways to reward civility, or we won’t see much of it.

“American consumers, who spent a year watching Congress scratch and claw over sweeping health care legislation, can now try to figure out what the overhaul would mean for them.” — Tara Siegel Bernard, today’s New York Times.

Actually, the news media spent a year feeding American citizens a steady diet of stories about Congressional procedure, the possible impact of health-care reform on elections, and quotes that falsely described the bill or denounced its critics. Americans never showed any desire to watch Congress “scratch and claw.” They would have appreciated some information about what various legislative bills would do.

Now that the bill has passed, reporters finally feel an obligation to explain it. Bernard’s story lists the major provisions, although The Times also feels obliged to run a front-page “news analysis” of Obama’s alleged strategy (he cast a “bet that the Republicans … overplayed their hand”), a separate article about political fights to come, and a panoply of one-liners: “Freedom dies a little bit today …” “It is almost like the Salem Witch trials …” The ratio of substance to horse-race reporting remains low, but I predict that weekly news magazines and metropolitan dailies will begin to run helpful explanatory pieces.

The job of the press is not to tell us who won or lost, or how a bill will affect our votes in the next election. Its job is to give us information that we can combine with our values to reach judgments. Measured by that standard, the press failed spectacularly during the health care debate. Reporters are partly responsible for the public’s deep misunderstanding of the bill–although the Democratic leadership also did a poor job explaining it, and we citizens should bear some responsibility, too.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist/blogger who studies such things, doubts that public misconceptions will dissipate any time soon. His research suggests that myths are stubborn and that efforts to correct them often backfire by inadvertently reinforcing the very misinformation that they seek to rebut.

As it must be, his work is based on data from the past, plus lab experiments. I think the health care situation may prove unusual, because (1) the legislation is momentous and will capture public attention, (2) the level of misinformation is striking, so there is lots of room for improvement, (3) people have incentives to learn what the bill means to them, (4) unless you are an ideologue, you have no motivation to reject positive information about the bill, and (5) trustworthy intermediaries, such as primary care physicians, have incentives to understand it and explain it accurately. I would be surprised if public understanding doesn’t rise.

But there I go, prognosticating about public opinion–just like a reporter. The important question is what the bill will actually do. I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to find out, if you don’t know already.

That would be Mark Danner’s “Obama & Sweet Potato Pie” in the New York Review of Books. Danner describes two rallies, one for Obama and one for McCain. As he notes, the national press corps follows the candidates, listens to them repeat their stump speeches time after time, and reports only the new lines that are inserted daily for their interest–usually attacks on the other candidates or responses to attacks. I well remember seeing Bill Bradley speak live in the 1992 campaign and marveling that the only aspect of his speech that appeared in the newspaper the next day was a line about Bill Clinton. The whole thing is a game that the campaigns and the press know how to play.

But a campaign also consists of whole speeches delivered in real settings to people from geographical communities. Danner depicts two such occasions as the dynamic interplay between the candidates and their audiences. He does an unusually good job of portraying both sets of voters with understanding and sympathy. He suppresses his own judgments in the interest of clear-eyed reporting. For me, the piece pretty much sums up the whole campaign.