Walter Lippmann (1889 –1974), political columnist and confidant of several presidents, public intellectual and winner of two Pulitzer prizes, remains an important voice among critics of public opinion and the role of the press. In early twentieth-century America, he was an essential contributor to American political thought and the American way of life, whose path he observed with authority. Lippmann also represents a rare intellectual tradition in American journalism; his weekly column, “Today and tomorrow,” became a powerful and effective response to the political scene in Washington.
Public opinion (1922) provides a pessimistic assessment of the idea of liberal democracy and the condition of public opinion. As such, it stands in contrast to John Dewey’s The public and its problems (1927) a few years later. Lippmann’s consideration of public opinion was influenced by political realities at home and abroad, including the rise of mass democracy in light of the advancements of science and technology and the rise of totalitarianism between two world wars. He understood the close relationship between democracy and media and regretted the political consequences of approaching mass communication as a form of mass consumption. His arguments concerning the failure of prevailing theories of democracy, and, implicitly at least, the failure of communication to initiate, support, and perpetuate the democratic experience, was advanced in a series of books, beginning with Liberty and the news (1920) and The phantom public (1925). His readings of Sigmund Freud and the influence of George Wallas, further, led him to reassert the importance of the irrational in politics and to argue for reconsidering bias, prejudice, and feelings as factors in how people attempt to grapple with notions of fact or reality.
Lippmann engaged in a thoughtful and challenging critique of contemporary democracy, including the role of the media, and never abandoned his search for answers, finally calling for a return to the ideals of western civilization in the guise of a public philosophy. Here, he drew on a Platonic notion of people as followers of decisions that are made by a capable and informed intellectual elite, in order to offer an alternative to liberal democracy as a prophetic vision. Lippmann’s writings are central to understanding the dilemmas of communication in modern society in general and in politics in particular. They return research and public debate to the question of power in a democratic state, and address both the position of institutions and the role of individuals in the creation of knowledge, including the responsibility of the press to serve the truth, to inform and to educate, rather than to excite or amuse.
- Childs, M. W., & Reston, J. W. (eds.) (1959). Walter Lippmann and his times. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
- Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Chicago: Swallow Press.
- Lippmann, W. (1920). Liberty and the news. New York: Macmillan.
- Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
- Lippmann, W. (1925). The phantom public. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
- Riccio, B. D. (1994). Walter Lippmann: Odyssey of a liberal. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Books.
- Riley, S. G. (1995). The biographical dictionary of American columnists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- Rossiter, C., & Lane, J. (eds.) (1982). The essential Lippmann: A political philosophy for liberal democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Steele, R. (1980). Walter Lippmann and the American century. New York: Little, Brown.
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