We need a way out of this mess...

Democracy only functions well with an informed electorate. One of the flaws that is being exposed more and more with each electoral cycle in the US is that we have a very poor system for getting objective information to voters.

If you have privately-owned media, they will tend to be run as for-profit enterprises. This means that advertisers will have undue influence (since they can threaten to withhold advertising from any media organization that makes them look bad), and owners will have undue influence (since they have an incentive to discourage stories that would interfere with their own personal interests).

If you have government-owned media, you now have the fox guarding the henhouse. Anyone seeking re-election will have an incentive to use their power in government to influence the media to make themselves look better and boost their chances.

How do we get out of this mess? Do we need to create a fourth branch of government whose job is to keep citizens informed and to track their opinions? Instead of having government worrying about the statistics of polls, suppose one could obtain accurate information on the opinions of the citizenry as a guideline for what the people actually want?

This would have been a logistical nightmare in 1776, and while modern database technology could handle it, it would still disenfranchise those who are too poor to afford a computer. But we’re close to this being a possibility. Would it be a good idea? How could we keep this from becoming corrupt?