Liberty and the News
By: Walter Lippmann
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 100
ISBN-13: 9781351289085
Subjects: Freedom of the press; Liberté de la presse; SOCIAL SCIENCE; Sociology; General
Description: "This little gem of a book, which first appeared in 1920, was written in Walter Lippmann's thirtieth year. He was still full of the passionate faith in democracy that was evident in his writings before the First World War. From today's point of view, Lippmann's argument seems unusually prescient. He was troubled by distortions in newspaper journalism, but was also deeply aware of the need to protect a free press. Lippmann believed that toleration of alternative beliefs was essential to maintaining the vitality of democracy. Liberty and the News is a key transitional work in the corpus of Lippmann's writings. For it is here that he proposes that public opinion is largely a response not to truths but rather to a "pseudo-environment" which exists between people and the external world. Lippmann was worried that if the beliefs that get exchanged between people are hollow, and bear only a purely accidental relationship to the world as it truly is, then the entire case for democracy is in danger of having been built on sand. His concerns remain very much alive and important."--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: title: Chapter Introduction to the Transaction Edition; title: chapter 1 Journalism and the Higher Law; title: chapter 2 What Modern Liberty Means; title: chapter 3 Liberty and the News.