Can’t Solve. Media isn’t the cause of political polarization, and misinformation is harmless and inevitable.

Much of the conversation around journalism and democracy concerns the problems of misinformation, disinformation and partisan silos. How do we ensure that Americans are getting accurate information? How do we help people resist conspiracy theories? How do we encourage readers and viewers to engage with perspectives outside their own?

I think these are important questions. But to the extent that the crisis in American democracy is shaped by the modern information environment, I don’t think the problem is misinformation, disinformation or partisan silos, because we’ve always had misinformation, disinformation and partisan silos.

The information environment of the early American Republic — the first years of the Constitution, leading up to the election of 1800 — was saturated with conspiracies and misinformation. For all intents and purposes, there was no press but the partisan press well into the 19th century, to the extent that local political machines produced their own newspapers for their supporters and patrons. And conspiracies, again, were the common currency of American politics.

We tend to remember the 20th century as the age of the broad-minded and objective journalist, but until the Second World War, the information environment of American life looked much like it did in the previous century, with tabloids and broadsheets competing with partisan outlets and ideological journals.

Our world of misinformation, disinformation and partisan news is a departure from the years during which a handful of large institutions dominated national news-making, but it’s a return to the world before those years, when the information environment was fractured and often unreliable.

If our information has almost always been fractured and unreliable, then our particular information environment can’t actually explain the problems facing American democracy.