By providing information, mass media can help voters make better decisions and hold politicians accountable. Often, journalists also help uncover corruption scandals and undue influence of special interest groups. Many argue that the active, informative press in the United States during the so-called Progressive Era reduced corruption and mobilized the population against the power and abuses of robber barons.
It was also during the Progressive Era that Louis Brandeis famously remarked, ‘Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.’ Earlier, Thomas Jefferson had gone so far as to say that free media is sufficient for political accountability: ‘Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe’...