This trenchant analysis questions why the interaction between the news media and their audiences fails to create the democratic potential everyone assumes occurs with such interaction. Drawing illustrations mainly from the Carter and Reagan years, the book presents a clear statement of the dilemmas facing the news media and their audience today.

The book offers a portrait of citizenship in America, defined by the public's changing levels of political knowledge and participation from 1952 to 1984. Politically unsophisticated, the mass audience prefers simple, symbolic news, which means that journalists can offer little of the detached, detailed explorations of policy issues that would provide the public with the information needed to hold government to close account.