The Electronic Republic is a lucid and thoughtful exploration of the role of media in democratic life as we leave the industrial age for the information age. Grossman's basic claim is simply that direct democracy is growing rapidly today, aided and abetted by the new media. Primaries have replaced party conventions. Ballot initiatives and referenda have become more common and more weighty. Polls tap public opinion more and more efficiently and public sentiment is relayed to elites more rapidly than ever through talk radio call-ins and computer networks.
Politicians monitor public opinion on a daily basis and respond to it quickly.
Presidents court the public rather than the Congress. Public opinion forms more directly and instantaneously than ever, responding in reflex to the apparently unmediated contact of television pictures rather than weighing with care expert interpretations in print. The book reviews these developments soberly. But if Grossman, former president of NBC News and head of PBS, raises familiar complaints, he also raises them to a higher level, integrating a wide range of relevant issues, refining them in the light of a strong sense of history. Still, Grossman's argument that we are witnessing the vast expansion of direct democracy must be faulted on two grounds.