Alcuin is also why I don't read the "Comments" section on YouTube.

          I was listening to Radio Times this morning and, as usual, I was forced to turn it off when it came time for the segment in which callers register their opinions. As I set out on my usual course of feeling mildly ashamed of myself for being an elitist prick, I began to think about the vox pop, and I’ve concluded that my snobbishness isn’t the only reason that I don’t have any real desire to listen to the opinions of my fellow citizens.
          Fundamentally it represents another case of the old telepathy problem; along with the benefits of learning to read minds, the mind-reader acquires a serious distaste for his peers. In the same way that already having a voice to express our thoughts makes telepathy repellant, the American public has, in the 21st century, a voice that can speak in ten-thousand decibel blasts, and it’s deforming the landscape of what else we wish to hear. I have, however, gotten ahead of myself.
          The predecessor to the broadcast media’s darling, the vox pop, was of course the letter to the editor, which has existed more or less since the foundation of American print journalism. During the early 18th century, these letters represented a non-trivial fraction of a newspaper’s content, as well as being the primary vehicle for a national discourse on politics and government, falling out of favor with the professionalization of journalism.
          When broadcast journalism adopted the technique in the form of the vox pop, it gradually gained a new relevance, having passed through an awkward pubescence in the 1930s during which it represented a platform for radio quizzes and prize give-aways. Through the periods of social upheaval in the United States in the 20th century it proved to be a significant social force, representing, ostensibly, the voice of the American people.
          But let’s talk about that. The suggestion that the internet is the new platform for the American public voice is hardly controversial, which seems like an almost rude thing to say in the shadow of the mouldering edifice that was once the proud institution of American print journalism. The obsolescence of the broadcast vox pop isn’t simply the truism of the technically inclined sneering at the practices of their elders, though.
          The representative nature of the vox pop has always been somewhat disingenuous. Putting aside practical constraints such as content standards and time limitations, however, the results of these interviews are highly unpredictable, and are often tightly edited. It falls to the professional standards and ethics of the journalistic community to maintain an even and representative cross-section.
          To tie my comments so far together, let’s go back to my off-hand remark about the decline of print media journalism. The advent of free, high-quality content on the internet has seriously damaged the previously impervious newspaper industry. The content that can still be successfully monetized is professionally written reporting delivered at a faster pace than printed papers can keep up with; it is no longer profitable to print letters to the editor in large quantities because they are freely available on the internet in abundance. The role of the vox populi in print reporting has dwindled because the vox dei aspect of it has shifted to even faster-paced environs such as Twitter.
          The reason that broadcast news industry hasn’t experienced such a sharp decline is certainly, in part, structural; the ability of broadcast media to produce and distribute content at a faster pace has certainly helped staunch the bleeding. The broadcast media has also drawn a different lesson from the history of journalism than that followed by print journalism.
          In the past it was a happy coincidence that the duty of the journalist to provide access to the public consciousness was so closely aligned with the ravenous desire of the public to hear its own voice. Print journalism held the diminution of editorials and letters to the editor close to its heart, and was unprepared for the threat of the internet to their monopoly on viable content. This is hardly some mark of noble spirit; the new representatives of the vox populi (Twitter et al.) have simply continued the work of television in pushing the newspapers out of the market for published public opinion. Meanwhile, the historical lesson drawn by the broadcast news media is that while the average American consumer is too arrogant to be interested in the opinions of the hayseed halfwits that live in other states, we’re thrilled to hear the opinion of members of our own demographic.
          This is obnoxious, but hardly sinister in the environment of local news, where the average viewer will in some way identify with at least one of the subjects of a genuine vox pop, allowing the distinction of journalist and public to be maintained. The national broadcast news industry, however, has realized that while no-one is interested in the opinion of their fellow citizens, professionalizing members of popular demographics has had the appeal of a vox pop and the credibility of actual journalism. Now would be an appropriate time to snicker at the history of the vox pop as an entertainment segment.
          This is, however, what I meant when I suggested that the vox pop is dangerously obsolete. The broadcast industry’s ability to monetize its product is being taxed by the increasing ability of the general public to produce high production-value content, and the response has been to put what they can sell on the air, while print news is being killed by these same market forces. Together these trends create the problem that the ungainly thrashing of broadcast news organizations, desperate not to follow the path of printed news, seems destined to destroy not only the notion of journalistic integrity, but also the idea that journalists have any place in producing the news content that we consume at all. After all, Glenn Beck proves daily that Alcuin was right; “And those people should not be listening to those who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”