A democracy falters when most of its citizens are uninformed or
misinformed, when misinformation affects political decisions and
actions, or when political actors foment misinformation - the state
of affairs the United States faces today, as this timely book makes
painfully clear. In Do Facts Matter? Jennifer L. Hochschild and
Katherine Levine Einstein start with Thomas Jefferson's ideal
citizen, who knows and uses correct information to make policy or
political choices. What, then, the authors ask, are the
consequences if citizens are informed but do not act on their
knowledge? More serious, what if they do act, but on incorrect
information? Analyzing the use, nonuse, and misuse of facts in
various cases - such as the call to impeach Bill Clinton, the
response to global warming, Clarence Thomas's appointment to the
Supreme Court, the case for invading Iraq, beliefs about Barack
Obama's birthplace and religion, and the Affordable Care Act -
Hochschild and Einstein argue persuasively that errors of
commission (that is, acting on falsehoods) are even more
troublesome than errors of omission. While citizens' inability or
unwillingness to use the facts they know in their political
decision making may be frustrating, their acquisition and use of
incorrect ""knowledge"" pose a far greater threat to a democratic
political system. Do Facts Matter? looks beyond individual citizens
to the role that political elites play in informing, misinforming,
and encouraging or discouraging the use of accurate or mistaken
information or beliefs. Hochschild and Einstein show that if a
well-informed electorate remains a crucial component of a
successful democracy, the deliberate concealment of political facts
poses its greatest threat.
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