The contradictions and paradoxes hardly end there, nor do the connections. A central argument presented here is that the full potential of the American democratic landscape cannot be realized with the traditional media model we have obediently accepted, and right there is another paradox. Media capable of conducting and transmitting such analysis needs to exist, but doesn’t. Therefore, to realize that potential, and the countless other possibilities for better lying dormant, will require the development of a “third way” for media; a genuine alternative. The freedom of the press (media) guaranteed at the founding, then primarily understood as newspapers, was soon throngs that often reflected politically partisan points of view. This “grew” to become https://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Collier%27s%20page.htm an always consolidating, “corporate media” that over time mostly came to be controlled by powerful individuals representing certain segments of society; their interests and perspectives. The commercial imperative, constantly present, neatly fused agenda to the profit motive and created the press of yellow journalism, spin, and sensationalism still featured prominently today. And, despite centuries passing, and the mediums of media changing and proliferating greatly, its central model - the single author broadcasting The media model of the single author broadcasting:

Media produced by individuals or media outlets and delivered to passive viewers – consuming - and attached to no action or organizing componentry. - has hardly been questioned much less transformed. These essential features of our media landscape have not been disrupted in any practical sense even with the “innovations” of public broadcasting and now, the alternative media of the Internet, added to the menu. Upholding the model while mostly taking its cue from the mainstream, alternative media in all its forms considers a mission of truth to be its only mandate; and to be fully decisive as well. It has failed to do – or even considered doing - these very important things:

• Make the knowledge it provides actionable - simply ask, what could be done with even the best information this or any media form can provide; without quitting the day job?
• Focus on things possible to influence - With a myopic focus on distant people and matters; presidents, central banks, leaks, etc. and so little regard for analysis or ironically, alternatives, they have promoted the abandonment of civics; obviously the only channel through which the media they produce could ultimately have impact.
• Offer organizing principles – assembling like-minded audiences while reporting “truth and crisis” while, without exception, attaching information, audience, and energies to nothing further speaks for itself.

With no genuine framework as a guide, all media of today persists with what has consistently failed; from the standpoint of the people. In practice, these last decades have simply reproduced the newspaper; with a comment thread. Every new media device of the Internet age - while demanding and claiming change - stubbornly, irrationally, functions as a fragment operating in a totally disconnected environment. So, even while knowledge has spread, this has assured a self-defeating mission with the cruelest of contradictions; even its best work will change nothing and maybe even have the opposite effect. However, from the standpoint of those in control it is a different matter completely. For them, our historic, constitutionally protected media has never lacked an action component. Its centrality to their integrated network of authority already documented has always been a foundation of the eternal vigilance they execute; as it of course it would have to be. For the people though this connection is never made. With the dogma unchallenged, what we are told – ad-nauseam – is that “truth’, being “informed”, is enough. But democratic expression is not the same thing as eternal vigilance and “being informed” alone represents no plan. Unless and until that connection is made and the capacities of the organized matched, there will only be the rulers and the ruled.