So let me remind you of the central points of my argument in a way that is briefer and even more bland than the original (if that is possible).

If we are to govern ourselves, then we must have access to all relevant information and the ability to use that information to make decisions. Furthermore, if we are to have access to genuine information and the ability to use it, we must be able to tell the difference between information and entertainment, between information and pseudo-information.

But, my original argument says, the Internet blurs the line between information and entertainment in a way that the traditional media do not. So on the Internet we cannot tell if something that looks like information really is, and if we cannot tell, then we do not have a solid basis upon which to make the very decisions that are necessary for self-government.

My argument, though, was probably not being detailed enough about either the traditional media or the Internet. So let me get a few more ideas out.

First, the traditional media are not as committed to an objective and unvarnished presentation of the truth as I had given them credit for.

Television, radio, and newspapers may very well have clearly labeled news and have the news clearly distinguished from entertainment, but the news itself does not necessarily gives us the information we need.

James Fallows, in his book Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (which has just recently been released in paperback), makes a pretty convincing case that the news is spun and twisted all too much.

I argued before that we can trust the media more than the Internet because the media have a vested interest in preserving their reputation for truthfulness and candor, while bloggers and YouTubers do not. But perhaps, as some argue, the mass media have even more of a vested interest in pleasing advertisers, the powers-that-be who are their news sources and a generally complacent public.

The very diversity of the Internet makes it possible to get at some original sources - legislation, data, events, voices of the unpopular - that are hard to get at in the mass media. The Internet, therefore, can potentially provide us with quick access to information that would have required a trip to the county law library or an eyewitness view of events in Iraq in years past.

The mass media also depend upon large scale attractiveness of their work for their financial health, while the citizen media - the bloggers and other denizens of the Internet - do not need that financial support at all. Thus, the citizen media can be more free to reveal the unpopular (though they are also more free to invent the untrue and the unfashionably stupid), for they do not risk their circulation or their Nielsen ratings when they do so.

Additionally, because any of us with a hookup to the Internet can set up our own blog and announce our own thoughts to the world, it is possible for experts in a certain field to present their data, their interpretations, to the world without going through the screening process of the mass media. So it is possible for us to see the work of experts that we would have a hard time finding without it.

And finally, the ease of hookup also makes it possible for us to hear a variety of voices, including some people who were otherwise shot out of the public square.

So, what is the upshot of all of this? I personally no longer think that the rise of the Internet is a threat to the practice of participatory democracy. Getting news off the Net may be superior in some ways to getting it from traditional media.

But it is going to take skill and diligence to tell the good from the bad on the Internet, the true from the misleading.

We can function as a democracy only if we can get the truth and then can think intelligently about it.

That's a tall order.

(This post was also published in the Hays Daily News)