ABSTRACT
One hundred years ago, Walter Lippmann observed that the news media were failing to meet the information needs of a modern democracy. Today, when despair over the decline of community news media has reached new heights and with watchdog journalism being seen as a (dispensable) public good rather than a (demanded) commercial good, Lippmann’s assessment of the state of journalism seems prescient. This chapter proposes an out-of-the-box solution: the creation of a watchdog journalism branch of government constitutionally independent of the other three branches but financed by – and guided by – fundamentally democratic principles. The Watchdog Journalism Branch would disrupt now-existing private-sector approaches but in a way that would spur needed competition and maximize First Amendment values.
