This article presented a detailed commentary on Michael Schudson’s The rise of the right to know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945–1975 regarding the author’s motivation, the cultural historical approach, purpose, and the implied journalism normative theory. This book further justifed the desirability of “monitorial citizenship” from the history of the rise and institutionalization of the right to know.Schudson treated the story as the ultimate result of the evolving power balance within the political system itself from sociology’s structural-functionalist perspective and thus denied the prevailing notion of participatory democracy.He proposed that watching over the political system is journalism’s proper role within the burgeoning new “monitory democracy” . In conclusion, the author criticizes Schudson’s argument and journalism normative theory and argues that citizen's active political engagement and participation in the public sphere is still essential for enacting the monitorial democracy he claims.