Why Cass Sunstein is wrong

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Sunstein shows little awareness that the dominance of the general-interest intermediaries he has in mind -- mass media outlets that large majorities of the citizenry were exposed to -- was a historical curiosity of the 20th century that had never been seen before and will, in all likelihood, never be seen again. The Founding Fathers lived in a polarized and fragmented media environment dominated by pamphleteers and partisan newspapers. To hear Sunstein tell it, republican virtues are imperiled by the emergence of a media market that is becoming more, not less, like the one that flourished when our republic was founded. This is counterintuitive, to say the least.