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 | | Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann ISBN-10: 9780684833279 ISBN-10: 0-684-83327-1 ISBN-13: 9780684833279 ISBN-13: 978-0-684-83327-9 Paperback 1997-06-12 Free Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Written by one of the most influential men of his time and one of the greatest journalists in history, this seminal work of political science presents an incisive examination of democratic theory, the role of citizens in a democracy, and the impact of the media in shaping thoughts and actions. | ||
Reviews | ||
Medicine or Poison for Democracies? There is plenty here I don't agree with, but many valuable lessons as well. Lippmann's interest in Public Opinion focuses on how democracy- as it is currently practiced- depends on an informed, engaged public to form policies based on an interest in the "common good". There are a lot of vulnerabilities; it is a fragile system at best, and Lippmann doesn't believe the system can work in a large, complex society, so a good 3/4 of the book is awfully down on democracy. The thesis is that people distill complex issues down into stereotypes and short, reductive soundbites. The author is incredulous that a disinterested, profit-driven press can deliver the relevent information for decision-making to a disinterested public. To give him his due, it is true that one of the great challenges of democracy is to get the electorate to understand the decisions before them, the potential consequences of their various options, and the struggle to even know where the public interest truly lies. It may not have been his intention, but Lippmann illustrates vividly how important a quality education system is to a functioning democracy. Therefore, an excellent book to read along with this is The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. After contructing his worldview, Lippmann hits us with his solution: replace the free press with an elaborate cadre of indifferent, professional information collectors, whose only desire is to present our elected representatives with pure, complete, and unbiased information. Yeah, right. Nothing Lippmann says suggests this new system would be less vulnerable than our current system to corruption, inefficiency, bias, or incompetence. I can't say for sure where the author is coming from- whether this is really his idea for a renewed democracy, or its deconstruction and replacement with something else. It seems that autocrats and others could use this as a playbook for exploiting weaknesses in our current system. On the other hand, the book reveals many important and legitimate criticisms of America in 2009. We DO need a better-informed, more skeptical, more demanding electorate. We DO need a less-centralized, freer, more agressive and independent press to function as a vital Fourth Estate. We DO need to recognize the complexity of many of the most important issues facing the voting public, and need to reject the superficial, thoughtless, manipulative soundbite format that most information is presented to us in. Overcoming those obstacles is a herculean task, but not impossible. I cannot accept the tenet that complexity precludes democracy, but Lippmann apparently has, and that is what I find so disheartening about this book. | ||
Classic work on media This is Lippmann's classic critique on media and public opinion written in the 1920s. His prose is easy to read and filled with a slew of anecdotes and casual asides. The book focuses on newspapers because they were the dominant news medium in his day, but many of his criticisms are still applicable to television and the internet today. Ironically, Lippmann was a strong opponent of socialism but his concern about the "manufacture of consent" inspired Noam Chomsky's scathing critique of the free-market media industry in Manufacturing Consent. One thing to keep in mind when ordering: this book has been reprinted numerous times by a variety of publishers with results of varying quality. Some of the publishers cut out Lippmann's footnotes or tack them onto the end of sentences rather than formatting them properly. I chose the version published by Free Press in 1997 because the formatting and typefaces they used are clean and remain true to the way the book was originally published. Check the "Look Inside" option to make sure you get a good-looking edition. | ||
Lippmann Made Sense Anyone who seriously considers a career in today's journalism needs to become familiar with how Walter Lippmann approached that once hallowed calling. It's not enough to be the first on the scene with a story, no matter how important that story may be. What's important is to have an informed opinion on what caused the event to happen and to be able to speculate, with some authoritative references, on how it will affect the future course of events. What made Walter Lippmann's thoughts, opinion and observations on current affairs so important to the movers and shakers of his day was his fundamental knowledge of history and how that knowledge related to the often bewildering array of modernist "spin" -- from the manipulation of popular opinion through propaganda, to the more often overlooked affect of human psychology on the course of politics and current events. | ||
Briiliant thinker, brilliant book. Lippman is sadly under-appreciated these days, I hadn't even heard his name until the past year, when, while working on my dissertation, I came across this book. Written in lucid, clear prose, yet dealing with incredibly complex theoretical and philosophical issues, Public Opinion argues that not only is there not really an agreed-upon "Public Opinion," but that people rarely even understand what they think they know, let alone what they can agree upon with other people. Lippman persuasively demonstrates that opinions are formed in such a way that they have little or no bearing upon "really existing" facts and truth most of the time, and instead are ill-informed, vague, and haphazard in their application of rational thought. Lippman closes by arguing that, since no one has the time or ability to be as informed as they are expected to be on every issue, what is needed is a group of intellectuals dedicated towards improving the quality of media we receive; a sort of "filter" which can correct misperceptions and inform the public at large. (Although, in his subsequent Lippman becomes even more pessimistic, arguing that there is no such thing as "the public".) This book is a must-read for those fascinated by media, politics, or even more general philosophical/culture questions. | ||
Great book, but terrible production Lippmann is great, but the BN Publishing edition of this book is beyond terrible. Misplaced (or simply missing) punctuation, misspelled words, no italics or boldface where they are needed, random line breaks in the middle of sentences, no indented paragraphs, no margins on the pages, haphazard footnotes ... you get the idea. The content is worth four or five stars for all the reasons that other reviewers have mentioned, but this printing is simply unreadable. | ||