Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann
Lippmann in 1914
Born	(1889-09-23)September 23, 1889 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	New York City
Occupation	Writer, journalist, political commentator
Education	Timothy Dwight School
Alma mater	Harvard University A.B. (1910)
Notable works	Founding editor, New Republic, Public Opinion
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize, 1958, 1962 Presidential Medal of Freedom
Spouse	Faye Albertson (divorced); Helen Byrne
Relatives	Jacob and Daisy Baum Lippmann

Walter Lippmann (23 September 1889 – 14 December 1974) was an American writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, and critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 book Public Opinion. Lippmann was also a notable author for the Council on Foreign Relations, until he had an affair with editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong's wife, which led to a falling out between the two men. Lippmann also played a notable role in Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I board of inquiry, as its research director. His views regarding the role of journalism in a democracy were contrasted with the contemporaneous writings of John Dewey in what has been retrospectively named the Lippmann-Dewey debate. Lippmann won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his syndicated newspaper column "Today and Tomorrow" and one for his 1961 interview of Nikita Khrushchev.

He has also been highly praised with titles ranging anywhere from "most influential" journalist of the 20th century, to "Father of Modern Journalism".

Michael Schudson writes that James W. Carey considered Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion as "the founding book of modern journalism" and also "the founding book in American media studies".

Early life

Walter Lippmann was born in New York City, 1889, to upper-middle class Jewish parents Jacob and Daisy Baum Lippmann, who also took annual holidays in Europe.

At 17, following his graduation from New York's Dwight School, he entered Harvard University where he wrote for The Harvard Crimson and studied under George Santayana, William James, and Graham Wallas, concentrating upon philosophy and languages (he spoke German and French), and he earned his degree in three years, graduating as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.

At some time, Lippmann became a member, alongside Sinclair Lewis, of the New York Socialist Party. In 1911, Lippmann served as secretary to George R. Lunn, the first Socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York, during Lunn's first term. Lippmann resigned his post after four months, finding Lunn's programs to be worthwhile in and of themselves, but inadequate as Socialism.

Career

Lippmann was a journalist, a media critic and an amateur philosopher who tried to reconcile the tensions between liberty and democracy in a complex and modern world, as in his 1920 book Liberty and the News. In 1913, Lippmann, Herbert Croly, and Walter Weyl became the founding editors of The New Republic magazine.

During the war, Lippmann was commissioned a captain in the Army on June 28, 1918, and was assigned to the intelligence section of the AEF headquarters in France. He was assigned to the staff of Edward House in October and attached to the American Commission to negotiate peace in December. He returned to the United States in February 1919 and was immediately discharged.

Through his connection to House, he became an adviser to Wilson and assisted in the drafting of Wilson's Fourteen Points speech. He sharply criticized George Creel, whom the President appointed to head wartime propaganda efforts at the Committee on Public Information. While he was prepared to curb his liberal instincts because of the war saying he had "no doctrinaire belief in free speech," he nonetheless advised Wilson that censorship should "never be entrusted to anyone who is not himself tolerant, nor to anyone who is unacquainted with the long record of folly which is the history of suppression."

Lippmann examined the coverage of newspapers and saw many inaccuracies and other problems. He and Charles Merz, in a 1920 study entitled A Test of the News, stated that The New York Times' coverage of the Bolshevik revolution was biased and inaccurate. In addition to his newspaper column "Today and Tomorrow", he wrote several books. Lippmann was the first to bring the phrase "cold war" to common currency, in his 1947 book by the same name.

It was Lippmann who first identified the tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas. He argued that people, including journalists, are more apt to believe "the pictures in their heads" than to come to judgment by critical thinking. Humans condense ideas into symbols, he wrote, and journalism, a force quickly becoming the mass media, is an ineffective method of educating the public. Even if journalists did better jobs of informing the public about important issues, Lippmann believed "the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation." Citizens, he wrote, were too self-centered to care about public policy except as pertaining to pressing local issues.

Later life

Following the removal from office of Secretary of Commerce (and former Vice President of the United States) Henry A. Wallace in September 1946, Lippmann became the leading public advocate of the need to respect a Soviet sphere of influence in Europe, as opposed to the containment strategy being advocated at the time by George F. Kennan.

Lippmann was an informal adviser to several presidents. On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson presented Lippmann with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He later had a rather famous feud with Johnson over his handling of the Vietnam War of which Lippmann had become highly critical.

He won a special Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1958, as nationally syndicated columnist, citing "the wisdom, perception and high sense of responsibility with which he has commented for many years on national and international affairs." Four years later he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting citing "his 1961 interview with Soviet Premier Khrushchev, as illustrative of Lippmann's long and distinguished contribution to American journalism."

Lippmann retired from his syndicated column in 1967.

Lippmann died in New York City because of cardiac arrest in 1974.

He has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a 6¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

He was mentioned in the monologue before Phil Ochs' recording of "The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo" on the 1966 album Phil Ochs in Concert.

Journalism

See also: post-factual

Though a journalist himself, Lippmann did not assume that news and truth are synonymous. For Lippmann, the "function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act." A journalist's version of the truth is subjective and limited to how they construct their reality. The news, therefore, is "imperfectly recorded" and too fragile to bear the charge as "an organ of direct democracy."

To Lippmann, democratic ideals had deteriorated: voters were largely ignorant about issues and policies and lacked the competence to participate in public life and cared little for participating in the political process. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann noted that modern realities threatened the stability that the government had achieved during the patronage era of the 19th century. He wrote that a "governing class" must rise to face the new challenges.

The basic problem of democracy, he wrote, was the accuracy of news and protection of sources. He argued that distorted information was inherent in the human mind. People make up their minds before they define the facts, while the ideal would be to gather and analyze the facts before reaching conclusions. By seeing first, he argued, it is possible to sanitize polluted information. Lippmann argued that interpretation as stereotypes (a word which he coined in that specific meaning) subjected us to partial truths. Lippmann called the notion of a public competent to direct public affairs a "false ideal." He compared the political savvy of an average man to a theater-goer walking into a play in the middle of the third act and leaving before the last curtain.

Mass culture

Lippmann was an early and influential commentator on mass culture, notable not for criticizing or rejecting mass culture entirely but discussing how it could be worked with by a government licensed "propaganda machine" to keep democracy functioning. In his first book on the subject, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann said that mass man functioned as a "bewildered herd" who must be governed by "a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality." The élite class of intellectuals and experts were to be a machinery of knowledge to circumvent the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the "omnicompetent citizen". This attitude was in line with contemporary capitalism, which was made stronger by greater consumption.

Later, in The Phantom Public (1925), Lippmann recognized that the class of experts were also, in most respects, outsiders to any particular problem, and hence not capable of effective action. Philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) agreed with Lippmann's assertions that the modern world was becoming too complex for every citizen to grasp all its aspects, but Dewey, unlike Lippmann, believed that the public (a composite of many "publics" within society) could form a "Great Community" that could become educated about issues, come to judgments and arrive at solutions to societal problems.

In 1943, George Seldes described Lippmann as one of the two most influential columnists in the United States.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Lippmann became even more skeptical of the "guiding" class. In The Public Philosophy (1955), which took almost twenty years to complete, he presented a sophisticated argument that intellectual élites were undermining the framework of democracy. The book was very poorly received in liberal circles.

Legacy

Almond–Lippmann consensus

Similarities between the views of Lippmann and Gabriel Almond produced what became known as the Almond–Lippmann consensus, which is based on three assumptions:

1. Public opinion is volatile, shifting erratically in response to the most recent developments. Mass beliefs early in the 20th century were "too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or appeasing in negotiations or too intransigent"
2. Public opinion is incoherent, lacking an organized or a consistent structure to such an extent that the views of US citizens could best be described as "nonattitudes"
3. Public opinion is irrelevant to the policymaking process. Political leaders ignore public opinion because most Americans can neither "understand nor influence the very events upon which their lives and happiness are known to depend."

Liberal/neoliberal debate

Further information: Neoliberalism

French philosopher Louis Rougier convened a meeting of primarily French and German liberal intellectuals in Paris on August 1938 to discuss the ideas put forward by Lippmann in his work The Good Society (1937). They named the meeting after Lippmann, calling it the Colloque Walter Lippmann. The meeting is often considered the precursor to the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, convened by Friedrich von Hayek in 1947. At both meetings discussions centered around what a new liberalism, or "neoliberalism", should look like.

Journalism

The Walter Lippmann House at Harvard University, which houses the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, is named after him too. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman used one of Lippmann's catch phrases, the "Manufacture of Consent," for the title of their book, Manufacturing Consent, which contains sections critical of Lippmann's views about the media.

Bibliography

Articles

• "The Campaign Against Sweating". The New Republic, March 27, 1915.
• "What Program Shall the United States Stand for in International Relations?". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 66, July 1916, pp. 60-70. JSTOR 1013427
• "The World Conflict in its Relation to American Democracy." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 72, July 1917, pp. 1-10. JSTOR 1013638
• "Democracy, Foreign Policy and the Split Personality of the Modern Statesman." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 102, July 1922, pp. 190-193. JSTOR 1014825
• "Today and Tomorrow." Washington Post, February 12, 1942. Full text available.
• "A Talk With Mr. K." November 10, 1958.
• "Nearing the Brink in Vietnam." Newsweek, April 12, 1965, pp. 25-46.

Book reviews

• Review of The Intimate Papers of Colonel House by Charles Seymour. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 3, April 1926. JSTOR 20028461 doi:10.2307/20028461

Essays

• "The Basic Problem of Democracy." November 1919, pp. 616-627.

This essay later became the first chapter Liberty and the News.

• "Concerning Senator Borah." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 2, January 1926, pp. 211-222. JSTOR 20028440 doi:10.2307/20028440
• "Vested Rights and Nationalism in Latin-America." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3, April 1927, pp. 353-363. JSTOR 20028538 doi:10.2307/20028538
• "Second Thoughts on Havana." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 4, July 1928, pp. 541-554. JSTOR 20028641 doi:10.2307/20028641
• "Church and State in Mexico: The American Mediation." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 2, January 1930. pp. 186-207. JSTOR 20030272 doi:10.2307/20030272
• "The London Naval Conference: An American View." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 4, July 1930, pp. 499-518. JSTOR 20030304 doi:10.2307/20030304
• "Ten Years: Retrospect and Prospect." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1, October 1932, pp. 51-53. JSTOR 20030482 doi:10.2307/20030482
• "Self-Sufficiency: Some Random Reflections." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, January 1934, pp. 207-217. JSTOR 20030578 doi:10.2307/20030578
• "Britain and America: The Prospects of Political Cooperation in the Light of Their Paramount Interests." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 3, April 1936, pp. 363-372. JSTOR 20030675 doi:10.2307/20030675
• "Rough-Hew Them How We Will." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 4, July 1937, pp. 586-594. JSTOR 20028803 doi:10.2307/20028803
• "The Cold War." Foreign Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 4, Spring 1987, pp. 869-884. JSTOR 20043099 doi:10.2307/20043099

Reports

• "A Test of the News." The New Republic, Vol. 23, No. 296, August 1920. 42 pages.

Books

• A Preface to Politics. Mitchell Kennerley, 1913. ISBN 1591022924. Audiobook available.
• Drift and Mastery. University of Wisconsin Press, 1914. ISBN 0299106047. Full text available.
• The Stakes of Diplomacy. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1915.
• The Political Scene. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1919.
• Liberty and the News. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.
• Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922. ISBN 0029191300. Audiobook available.
• The Phantom Public. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1925. ISBN 1560006773
• Men of Destiny. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927. ISBN 0295950269. Excerpts available.
• American Inquisitors. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928.
• A Preface to Morals. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929. ISBN 0878559078
• Interpretations, 1931-1932. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932.
• The United States in World Affair, 1931. New York: Harper & Bros, 1932.
• The United States in World Affairs, 1932. New York: Harper & Bros, 1933.
• The Method of Freedom. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934.
• Interpretations, 1933-1935. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936.
• The Good Society. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1937. ISBN 0765808048
• U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1943.
• U.S. War Aims. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1944. ISBN 978-0306707735
• The Cold War. New York: Harper & Row, 1947. ISBN 0061317233
• The Public Philosophy, with William O. Scroggs. New York: New American Library, 1955. ISBN 0887387918
• The Coming Tests With Russia. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1961. LCCN 61--14950

Pamphlets

• Notes on the Crisis (No. 5). New York: John Day, 1932. 28 pages.
• A New Social Order (No. 25). John Day, 1933. 28 pages.
• The New Imperative. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935. 52 pages.

See also

• Harold Lasswell
• Edward Bernays
• Progressivism
• Liberal democracy

Further reading

Articles

• Clavé, Francis. "Comparative Study of Lippmann's and Hayek's Liberalisms (or Neo-liberalisms)." The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 22, Issue 6, 2015, pp. 978–999. doi:10.1080/09672567.2015.1093522
• Jackson, Ben. "Freedom, the Common Good, and the Rule of Law: Lippmann and Hayek on Economic Planning." Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 72, 2012, pp. 47–68. doi:10.1080/09592296.2011.625803
• Whitfield, Stephen J. "Part IV: The Journalist as Intellectual. Walter Lippmann: A Career in Media's Rays." Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1981, pp. 68-77. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1981.1502_68.x
• Porter, Patrick. "Beyond the American Century: Walter Lippmann and American Grand Strategy, 1943–1950." Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 22, No. 4, 2011, pp. 557-577.
• Seyb, Ronald P. "What Walter Saw: Walter Lippmann, the New York World, and Scientific Advocacy as an Alternative to the News-Opinion Dichotomy." Journalism History, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2015, pp. 58+.

Book reviews

• McPerson, Harry C. Review of "Walter Lippmann and the American Century," by Ronald Steel. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 1, Fall 1980. doi:10.2307/20040658

Books

• Adams, Larry Lee. Walter Lippmann. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977. ISBN 978-0805777093
• Forcey, Charles. The Crossroads of Liberalism: Croly, Weyl, Lippmann, and the Progressive Era, 1900-1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. LCCN 61--8370
• Goodwin, Craufurd D. Walter Lippmann: Public Economist. Harvard University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0674368132
• Riccio, Barry D. Walter Lippmann: Odyssey of a Liberal. Transaction Publishers, 1994. ISBN 978-1560000969
• Steel, Ronald. Walter Lippmann and the American Century. Little, Brown & Co., 1980. ISBN 978-0765804648
  • Foreign Affairs review.
• Wasniewski, Matthew A. "Walter Lippmann, Strategic Internationalism, the Cold War, and Vietnam, 1943-1967" (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Maryland, 2004.
• Wellborn, Charles. Twentieth Century Pilgrimage: Walter Lippmann and the Public Philosophy. LSU Press, 1969. ISBN 0807103039
• Wright, Benjamin F. Five Public Philosophies of Walter Lippmann. University of Texas Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0292724075

Primary sources

• Public Philosopher: Selected Letters of Walter Lippmann. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1985.
• Rossiter, Clinton, and James Lare (eds.). The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.

External links

• Articles by Walter Lippmann at The Atlantic
• Articles by Walter Lippmann at Foreign Affairs
• Books by Walter Lippmann at HathiTrust
• Works by Walter Lippmann at JSTOR
• Works by Walter Lippmann at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Walter Lippmann at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Walter Lippmann at Spartacus Educational
• Public Opinion (1922) from American Studies at the University of Virginia.
• Biography with excerpt from works
• Guide to the Walter Lippmann Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
• Walter Lippmann, "The Mental Age of Americans", New Republic 32, no. 412 (October 25, 1922): 213–15; no. 413 (November 1, 1922): 246–48; no. 414 (November 8, 1922): 275–77; no. 415 (November 15, 1922): 297–98; no. 416 (November 22, 1922): 328–30; no. 417 (November 29, 1922): 9–11.
• "Writings of Walter Lippmann" from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History
• The American Presidency Project – Remarks at the Presentation of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards – September 14, 1964
• Walter Lippmann, Patriotism and state sovereignty (1929)
• Walter Lippmann at Library of Congress Authorities, with 122 catalog records
• Newspaper clippings about Walter Lippmann in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• USC Center on Public Diplomacy Profile