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In modern representative democracy, political legitimacy is based on potentially conflicting principles: (1) the “popular sovereignty” principle, stating that the republic must be based on “the opinion of the people,” and (2) the “rule of law” principle which suggests that constitutional values of the republic must be protected from “irregular interpositions of the people.” As a parallel institution supporting the democratic republic (e.g., the press as the “Fourth Branch”), the role of journalists has continuously changed, and the journalistic institution has been balancing those two potentially conflicting principles. This study examines the current status of journalistic values as part of modern democracy. Traditionally accepted news used to balance the conflflict between constitutionalism and populism by distancing journalists from both the existing elites and the mass. However, due to the recent transformation of the media landscape and the uprising of people’s anti-establishment feelings, news audience has struggled to relate their everyday lives to the mainstream journalism institutions. As a key alternative journalistic value of the traditional journalistic standard, the “news objectivity,” this study suggests “social empathy” as a solution of the modern political conundrum between two potentially conflflicting principles that most representative democracies face.
