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Walter Lippmann

1889 – 1974 American journalist, political commentator, author

Influential American journalist whose 1922 book Public Opinion argued that ordinary people cannot grasp a complex world unaided and that elites must manage what the public believes.

Affiliations
The New Republic, New York World, the Inquiry, Council on Foreign Relations

Walter Lippmann was one of the most widely read American political writers of the twentieth century, a co-founder of The New Republic and a syndicated columnist for decades. During the First World War he worked on Allied propaganda and helped staff the Inquiry, the group of experts assembled to plan the postwar settlement. In Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925) he argued that the pictures in people's heads rarely match reality, that citizens cannot follow the full complexity of public affairs, and that a specialized class must therefore shape opinion through what he called the manufacture of consent. Critics read this as an elitist case for managed democracy; John Dewey answered it by defending a more participatory public. Lippmann's phrase and framing later became central to critiques of the media, notably in Chomsky and Herman's work.

Connections

  • associate of Edward Bernays — A parallel theorist of managing public opinion; both worked on First World War propaganda and shaped the idea that consent could be engineered.
  • associate of George Creel — Both were part of the American wartime propaganda and information effort.
  • associate of George Creel — Both were part of the American wartime propaganda effort of 1917 to 1918.
  • rival of John Dewey — Dewey publicly answered Lippmann's case for expert-managed opinion by defending a more participatory public.

In the timeline

Wikipedia