But when
you are dealing with an invisible environment, the assumption is
false. The truth about distant or complex matters is not self-evident,
and the machinery for assembling information is technical and
expensive. Yet political science, and especially democratic political
science, has never freed itself from the original assumption of
Aristotle's politics sufficiently to restate the premises, so that
political thought might come to grips with the problem of how to make
the invisible world visible to the citizens of a modern state.
So deep is the tradition, that until quite recently, for example,
political science was taught in our colleges as if newspapers did not
exist. I am not referring to schools of journalism, for they are trade
schools, intended to prepare men and women for a career. I am
referring to political science as expounded to future business men,
lawyers, public officials, and citizens at large. In that science a
study of the press and the sources of popular information found no
place. It is a curious fact. To anyone not immersed in the routine
interests of political science, it is almost inexplicable that no
American student of government, no American sociologist, has ever
written a book on news-gathering. There are occasional references to
the press, and statements that it is not, or that it ought to be,
"free" and "truthful." But I can find almost nothing else.
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