Lippmann Revisited: A Comment 80 Years Subsequent to ‘Public Opinion’

The contribution argues that complaints about journalism follow from the societal ideal regarding the media as an institution of direct democracy expected to present us with a true picture of the external world in which we are interested. The illusory nature of this ideal is enhanced by the characteristics of the edited society in which information ‘providers’ try to involve the media in a political struggle over opinion-shaping, agenda-setting, personal profiling, economic control and political influence. Journalism and politics both concentrate on the specific, the short-term, the individualized and the tangible, rejecting the attention attached to the general, the long-term, the collective and the abstract. The core of the problem appears to be the intolerable and unworkable myth that each of us must acquire a competent opinion about all public affairs. This fiction, partly a product of the voters’ rational ignorance, creates a tension between our ideals of democracy and the realities.