ABSTRACT
What is the most important thing that citizens need to know about politics? In this chapter we will argue that knowing the position of the parties on key political issues, is one of the most important types of political knowledge. If citizens are to perform their role as voters in a meaningful way, they must know the issue positions of the parties on the key issues. But the issue positions of the parties rarely make headlines in the media. Not because they are unimportant, but because they are considered tacit knowledge by journalists. Although parties try to remind voters of their issue positions whenever possible, their chances of doing so are limited. Journalists are afraid to bore their audience with “yesterdays news” so their attention is drawn to the new, the surprising, and the deviating, at the expense of what they assume to be common knowledge, such as the policy positions of the parties. The issue positions are therefore only present as a subtext in political journalism. We believe this form of political communication may create a divide between insiders and outsiders, those who have the basic, necessary knowledge, and those who lack it.
