Liberty And The News

In Liberty and the News Walter Lippmann offers us a stern warning about the importance of reliable news to the survival of a healthy democracy. He railed against bad journalism and drove home the point that the general public must be able to ascertain the truth or democracy is doomed. Walter Lippmann was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the father of modern journalism.

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Excerpt from Liberty and the News In writing this tract I have dared to believe that many things were pos sible because of the personal example offered to all who practice journalism by Mr. C. P. Scott, for over forty-five years editor-in-chief of the Manchester Guardian. In the light of his career it cannot seem absurd or remote to think of freedom and truth in relation to the news. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Walter Lippmann's poignant analysis of the news media, its relationship to democracy, and the exercise of personal liberty and free thought, remains a classic of its field. Although brief and more than a century old, Lippmann's examination of the media and its influence upon democratic government in the United States remains valuable. This title consists of three essays, all of which revolve around the relationship between the news media, the public, and the government. In the assessment of Lippmann, the media became a mouthpiece of the government during World War I; an entity which seeks not to simply report events, but to instruct and influence public opinion in a manner beneficial to the nation's government. Such circumstances are directly against the idea of a free press, and this usurpation is what Lippmann condemns in these essays. How and to what extent the media is in thrall to the state, and how this connection affects the quality and veracity of its news reports, remain poignant questions in the modern day. Thus the pointed criticisms and constructive suggestions expressed in this book retain relevance and importance, to students and individuals interested in how the news is created, and how its realities conflict with its ideals.

Collected in this massive 500+ page omnibus editions are Walter Lippman's four most important books. These four books are seminal texts in the fields of media studies, political science, and social psychology. The father of modern journalism, Walter Lippmann was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and visionary. A Preface to Politics is most incisive comment on politics to-day is indifference. When men and women begin to feel that elections and legislatures do not matter very much, that politics is a rather distant and unimportant exercise, the reformer might as well put to himself a few searching doubts. Indifference is a criticism that cuts beneath oppositions and wranglings by calling the political method itself into question. In Liberty and the News Walter Lippmann offers us a stern warning about the importance of reliable news to the survival of a healthy democracy. He railed against bad journalism and drove home the point that the general public must be able to ascertain the truth or democracy is doomed. Public Opinion exposes how media can shape public perception and how that perception changes society. It is a critical assessment of functional democratic government, especially of the irrational and often self-serving social perceptions that influence individual behavior and prevent optimal societal cohesion. The detailed descriptions of the cognitive limitations people face in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments, leading them to apply an evolving catalogue of general stereotypes to a complex reality, rendered Public Opinion The Phantom Public was Lippman's most towering achievement influencing political thought for decades to come. In it Lippman posits that the public exists merely as an illusion, myth, and inevitably a phantom; that the common man cannot be expected to know enough about events entirely beyond their control to cast an informed and meaningful vote.