http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann

Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974)[1] 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. 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 Khruschev.[2][3]

Contents [show] Early life[edit] Walter Lippmann was born on September 23, 1889, in New York City, to Jacob and Daisy Baum Lippmann; his upper-middle class German Jewish family took annual holidays in Europe. At age 17, he entered Harvard University where he studied under George Santayana, William James, and Graham Wallas, concentrating upon philosophy and languages (he spoke German and French), and earned his degree in three years, graduating as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.[4]

Career[edit] 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 World War I, 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 Colonel Edward M. 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 from the Army.[5]

Through his connection to Colonel House, he became an adviser to President Woodrow 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."[6]

Walter 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.

Walter Lippmann in 1914 It was Lippmann who first identified the tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas.[citation needed] He argued that people—including journalists—are more apt to believe "the pictures in their heads" than 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.

On journalism[edit] Lippmann saw the purpose of journalism as "intelligence work". Within this role, journalists are a link between policymakers and the public. A journalist seeks facts from policymakers which he then transmits to citizens who form a public opinion. In this model, the information may be used to hold policymakers accountable to citizens. This theory was spawned by the industrial era and some critics[citation needed] argue the model needs rethinking in post-industrial societies.

Though a journalist himself, he 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 he constructs his reality. The news, therefore, is "imperfectly recorded" and too fragile to bear the charge as "an organ of direct democracy.”

To his mind, democratic ideals had deteriorated, voters were largely ignorant about issues and policies, they lacked the competence to participate in public life and cared little for participating in the political process. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann noted that the stability the government achieved during the patronage era of the 19th century was threatened by modern realities. 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 seeing through stereotypes (which he coined in this 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.

On mass culture[edit] Lippmann was an early and influential commentator on mass culture, notable for not criticizing or rejecting mass culture entirely, but discussing how it could be worked with to keep democracy functioning. In his first book on the subject, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann said mass man functioned as a "bewildered herd" who must be governed by "a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality." The elite 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, while it could be considered elitist today, was held as liberal by the standards of the 1920s, endorsing the continuation of civil society rather than populist fascism.

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.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Lippman 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 elites were undermining the framework of democracy. This book was very poorly received in liberal society.[7]

Later years[edit] 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.[8] On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson presented Lippmann with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[9] He later had a rather famous feud with Johnson over his handling of the Vietnam War, of which Lippmann had become highly critical.[10]

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."[2] 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."[3]

Lippmann retired from his syndicated column in 1967,[11] and died in 1974.

Legacy: Almond–Lippmann consensus[edit] A meeting of liberal intellectuals mainly from France and Germany organized in Paris in August 1938 by French philosopher Louis Rougier to discuss the ideas put forward by Lippmann in his work Public Opinion (1937), Colloque Walter Lippmann was named after Walter Lippmann. 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, contains sections critical of Lippmann's views about the media.

Similarities between the views of Lippmann and Gabriel Almond produced what became known as the Almond–Lippmann consensus, which is based on three assumptions:[12]

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"[13] Public opinion is incoherent, lacking an organized or a consistent structure to such an extent that the views of U.S. citizens could best be described as "nonattitudes"[14] Public opinion is irrelevant to the policy-making 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."[15][16] Death[edit] Lippmann died on December 14, 1974, at age 85 in New York City.[1]

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 "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" on the 1966 album Phil Ochs in Concert.

Bibliography[edit] A Preface to Politics (1913) ISBN 1-59102-292-4 Drift and Mastery (1914) ISBN 0-299-10604-7 The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915) The Political Scene (1919) Liberty and the News (1920) Public Opinion (1922) ISBN 0-02-919130-0 The Phantom Public (1925) ISBN 1-56000-677-3 Men of Destiny (1927) ISBN 0-295-95026-9 American Inquisitors (1928) A Preface to Morals (1929) ISBN 0-87855-907-8 Interpretations 1931–1932 (1932) The Method of Freedom (1934) The New Imperative (1935) Interpretations 1933–1935 (1936) The Good Society (1937) ISBN 0-7658-0804-8 U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943) U.S. War Aims (1944) The Cold War (1947) ISBN 0-06-131723-3 The Public Philosophy (1955) ISBN 0-88738-791-8 With William O. Scroggs: The United States in World Affairs 1931 (1932) The United States in World Affairs 1932 (1933)

El término neoliberal fue acuñado en 1938 en una conferencia en París. El "Coloquio Lippmann" fue convocado para celebrar la publicación en francés del libro "The Good Society" del estadounidense Walter Lippmann. En el evento participaron pensadores que posteriormente fundarían la sociedad Mont Pelerin, incluyendo el futuro premio Nobel Frederick Hayek.

Walter Lippmann fue uno de los periodistas más influyentes de su época. Políticamente, fue un "progresista". Fue amigo del presidente Franklin D. Roosevelt y de John Maynard Keynes. Sus columnas, publicadas en el Herald Tribune, eran leídas por millones de personas.

A mediados de la década de los 30 del siglo XX, Lippmann empezó a preocuparse por lo que llamó la ascendencia del "colectivismo autoritario". Para él, fascistas, nacionalsocialistas, y comunistas estaban poniendo en jaque a las democracias representativas. Los partidarios de la planificación, dentro de la administración Roosevelt, también representaban un peligro.

Lo preocupante, según Lippmann, era que Occidente no tenía respuestas a estas amenazas. No había un modelo que se contrapusiera en forma exitosa al colectivismo. El liberalismo clásico no era persuasivo, ni tenía respuestas a los desafíos del momento, como el desempleo masivo, los abusos de los conglomerados monopólicos, y la deflación; su insistencia en el laissez faire había culminado en la Gran Depresión.

En 1935, Lippmann escribió una columna adelantando lo que luego plantearía en su famoso libro. Dijo que para enfrentar a estos autoritarismos era necesario fomentar un "liberalismo regenerado". Este sistema estaría basado en un nuevo contrato social: "uno que no sería ni laissez-faire ni colectivismo, ni individualismo a ultranza ni economía planificada". Según Lippmann, este nuevo liberalismo debía "usar el poder para preservar la empresa privada por medio de la regulación de sus abusos y la búsqueda del equilibrio de sus deficiencias".

Este liberalismo regenerado no solo protegería la propiedad privada; además cuidaría el medio ambiente y los recursos naturales; ayudaría a los desvalidos, impulsaría ciudades amables, y protegería a aquellos afectados por el rápido avance del progreso tecnológico. Lippmann también creía en la necesidad de seguir políticas fiscales y monetarias contracíclicas para aminorar los efectos del ciclo económico.

Para Lippmann, el desafío era cómo alcanzar todo lo anterior. Cómo evitar los vicios de la derecha y de la izquierda, las que según él siempre habían amparado "el proteccionismo, los privilegios y los monopolios".

En "The Good Society" Lippmann argumentó que era menester cambiar la institucionalidad legal en democracia. Si se establecían nuevas reglas del juego que equilibraran competencia y seguridad social, un nuevo sistema se desarrollaría en forma espontánea. Había que evitar a toda costa la injerencia directa de la autoridad intrusa, burocrática y pesadamente administrativa.

Como se puede ver, en este planteamiento original sobre "neoliberalismo" no hay capitalismo salvaje ni competencia a ultranza; tampoco pisoteo de los más débiles, o ausencia de regulación.

Durante las últimas décadas, en Chile (casi) no ha habido liberales; tampoco neoliberales, en el sentido de Lippmann. La derecha nacional ha estado dominada por conservadores integristas y, desde hace un tiempo, por neoconservadores llenos de energía. Pero eso es tema de otra historia.

וולטר ליפמן

' (באנגלית: Walter Lippmann; ‏23 בספטמבר 1889 – 14 בדצמבר 1974) היה עיתונאי, פרשן, סופר והוגה דעות אמריקאי, יהודי, זוכה פרס פוליצר בשנים 1958 ו-1962 על טורו, שהופץ בסינדיקציה ברחבי ארצות הברית "היום ומחר" (Today and Tomorrow).

תוכן עניינים 1 קורות חיים 2 דעותיו וכתביו 3 קישורים חיצוניים 4 הערות שוליים קורות חיים ליפמן נולד בניו יורק למשפחה יהודית אמידה ממוצא גרמני. בהיותו בן 17 החל ללמוד פילוסופיה ושפות באוניברסיטת הרווארד, בהדרכת מרצים כג'ורג' סנטיאנה, ויליאם ג'יימס וגרהאם וולאס. ליפמן הצטיין בלימודיו וסיים את התואר הראשון בתוך שלוש שנים. בתקופת לימודיו הביע דעות סוציאליסטיות.

לאחר סיום לימודיו החל לעבוד אצל העיתונאי לינקולן סטיבנס. בתקופה זו חזר בו מתמיכתו בסוציאליזם והביע דעות פרוגרסיביות ותמיכה בתאודור רוזוולט. בשנת 1913 ייסד ביחד עם העיתונאים הרברט קרולי ווולטר וייל את השבועון ניו ריפבליק. במהלך מלחמת העולם הראשונה היה יועצו של הנשיא וודרו וילסון, וסייע לו בניסוח ארבע עשרה הנקודות.

במהלך השנים עבד במספר עיתונים. בשנת 1920 החל לעבוד בעיתון "ניו יורק וורלד", ובשנת 1929 היה לעורך העיתון. העיתון נסגר בשנת 1931 וליפמן החל לעבוד עבור ה"ניו יורק הראלד טריביון". בתקופה זו החל לפרסם את טורו רב ההשפעה "היום ומחר" שפורסם בסינדיקציה בעיתונים רבים. במשך השנים פרסם גם ספרים רבי השפעה. ספרו "המלחמה הקרה" (השם קיבל השראה מהביטוי "המלחמה הקרה" שהוזכר בנאומו של איש העסקים ברנרד ברוך) משנת 1947 היה אחד הגורמים לתפוצת הביטוי המלחמה הקרה. בעקבות פיטוריו של הנרי וולאס בספטמבר 1946 היה ליפמן מראשי הדוברים בציבור בעד כיבוד מרחב ההשפעה של ברית המועצות באירופה, בניגוד לאסטרטגיית ההכלה עליה המליצו דוברים כג'ורג' קנאן. ליפמן המשיך להיות איש ציבור רב השפעה גם בעשורים שלאחר מכן והיה בעל גישה למספר נשיאים. עם לינדון ג'ונסון עמד בעימות מתוקשר עקב מדיניותו בנוגע למלחמת וייטנאם נגדה העלה ליפמן ביקורת נוקבת.

דעותיו וכתביו ליפמן הביע באופן עקבי דעות שניסו ליישב את המתחים בין החירות והדמוקרטיה בעולם המודרני, דעות שבוטאו בספרו "החירות והחדשות" (Liberty and the News; 1920). ליפמן סבר כי הדמוקרטיה המודרנית מתקשה לפעול במדינת הלאום החדשה המושלת בטריטוריה נרחבת ובה מיליוני אנשים, בהתחשב בטבע הלא רציונלי של האדם, ובכאוטיות המובנית במבנה החברתי. הוא קרא להכרה בפגמים הטבועים בדמוקרטיה. ליפמן התלונן על כי הרעיונות הדמוקרטיים התנוונו, האזרחים הפכו לציבור נבער מדעת על נושאים ומדיניות, לא פיתחו את היכולת להשתתף בחיים הציבוריים, ואיבדו את האכפתיות להשתתף בהליך הפוליטי. בשל כך תמך בממשל על ידי "מעמד מתמחה שהאינטרסים שלו מגיעים אל מעבר לאינטרס המקומי". אליטות אלו של מומחים וביורוקרטים אמורים להיות המנגנון של הפצת הידע ושימורו המתקן את הפגמים הקיימים בשיטה הדמוקרטית.

ליפמן עמד בדיון ציבורי פתוח עם הפילוסוף בן זמנו ג'ון דיואי שהסכים עם ליפמן כי העולם המודרני הוא מורכב מכדי שהאזרח הפשוט יבין כל מאפיין שלו, אך שלא כליפמן סבר כי הציבור יכול ליצור "קהילה גדולה", שתהיה הפתרון לבעיות החברתיות, ותיצור שיח ציבורי שימציא מחדש באופן רב דמיון את תנאי של החיים הקולקטיביים, ויראה מעבר לפגמי הדמוקרטיה את האפשרויות החיוביות הטמונות בה.

בספרו "The Public and its Problems" ‏(1927) התווכח דיואי עם ראייתו של ליפמן את תפקיד העיתונאי בדמוקרטיה. על פי דיואי המודל של ליפמן הוא מודל פשוט של העברה בו מעביר העיתונאי את המידע הנמסר לו על ידי המומחים והאליטות, אורז אותו במונחים פשוטים, ומגיש אותו לציבור, המגיב באופן רגשי לחדשות. במודל זה, טען דיואי, הציבור נחשב כמי שאינו מסוגל למחשבה או לפעולה עצמאית.

דיואי טען כי כל אדם צריך להיות מעורב בפוליטיקה במהלך היום יום שלו. הידע הנדרש לכך, על פי דיואי, נרכש במהלך האינטראקציה של האזרחים, האליטות והמומחים, כאשר העיתונאי נחשב כמתווך. תפקיד העיתונאי הוא להתמקד בבחירות שיכול האזרח לבחור, בתוצאות ובתנאים, על מנת לקדם את השיחה ולשפר את יצירת הידע בקהילה. התוצר העיתונאי אינו צריך להיות סיפור סטאטי על מה שכבר קרה, אלא מצב של שינוי מתמשך של הקהילה באמצעות צבירת ידע.

בכתיבתו העיתונאית ובכתיבתו על העיתונות בחן ליפמן את הכיסוי החדשותי של האירועים שהתרחשו בתקופתו, ומצא בו חוסרים ואי דיוקים. בשנת 1920 פרסם ביחד עם העורך צ'ארלס מרץ מחקר בשם "A Test of the News" בו הראה כי הכיסוי של מהפכת אוקטובר על ידי העיתון ניו יורק טיימס לקה בנטאי ובחוסר דיוקים. כתיבתו, והתנגדותו הנחרצת לקומוניזם, הקנו לו גישה למקורות רבי עוצמה בממשל.

בתחילת 1933, כאשר היה הפרשן הפוליטי האמריקאי הנודע ביותר של אותה העת בה גאו אלימות הנאצים ורדיפות היהודים, מצא ליפמן היהודי מילות שבח להיטלר ואף הוסיף הערת ביקורת על היהודים.[1]

ליפמן ידוע בכך שבשנת 1948 כתב בטורו כי "מבין כל הבעיות הקשות באמת של העולם, הסכסוך הישראלי-ערבי הוא הפשוט מכולם וגם הניתן ביותר לניהול", קביעה המובאת לעיתים כדוגמה לקביעה מופרכת הבאה מפיו של אדם בעל סמכות בתחומו.[2]

ליפמן מת בניו יורק בשנת 1974, בגיל 85.

קישורים חיצוניים מיזמי קרן ויקימדיה ויקיציטוט ציטוטים בוויקיציטוט: וולטר ליפמן עמנואל סיון, על מה כותבים הפובליציסטים , העין השביעית, 1 במרץ 1999 https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%98%D7%A8_%D7%9C...

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann

Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974)[1] 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. 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 Khruschev.[2][3]

Contents [show] Early life[edit] Walter Lippmann was born on September 23, 1889, in New York City, to Jacob and Daisy Baum Lippmann; his upper-middle class German Jewish family took annual holidays in Europe. At age 17, he entered Harvard University where he studied under George Santayana, William James, and Graham Wallas, concentrating upon philosophy and languages (he spoke German and French), and earned his degree in three years, graduating as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.[4]

Career[edit] 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 World War I, 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 Colonel Edward M. 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 from the Army.[5]

Through his connection to Colonel House, he became an adviser to President Woodrow 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."[6]

Walter 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.

Walter Lippmann in 1914 It was Lippmann who first identified the tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas.[citation needed] He argued that people—including journalists—are more apt to believe "the pictures in their heads" than 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.

On journalism[edit] Lippmann saw the purpose of journalism as "intelligence work". Within this role, journalists are a link between policymakers and the public. A journalist seeks facts from policymakers which he then transmits to citizens who form a public opinion. In this model, the information may be used to hold policymakers accountable to citizens. This theory was spawned by the industrial era and some critics[citation needed] argue the model needs rethinking in post-industrial societies.

Though a journalist himself, he 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 he constructs his reality. The news, therefore, is "imperfectly recorded" and too fragile to bear the charge as "an organ of direct democracy.”

To his mind, democratic ideals had deteriorated, voters were largely ignorant about issues and policies, they lacked the competence to participate in public life and cared little for participating in the political process. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann noted that the stability the government achieved during the patronage era of the 19th century was threatened by modern realities. 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 seeing through stereotypes (which he coined in this 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.

On mass culture[edit] Lippmann was an early and influential commentator on mass culture, notable for not criticizing or rejecting mass culture entirely, but discussing how it could be worked with to keep democracy functioning. In his first book on the subject, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann said mass man functioned as a "bewildered herd" who must be governed by "a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality." The elite 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, while it could be considered elitist today, was held as liberal by the standards of the 1920s, endorsing the continuation of civil society rather than populist fascism.

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.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Lippman 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 elites were undermining the framework of democracy. This book was very poorly received in liberal society.[7]

Later years[edit] 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.[8] On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson presented Lippmann with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[9] He later had a rather famous feud with Johnson over his handling of the Vietnam War, of which Lippmann had become highly critical.[10]

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."[2] 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."[3]

Lippmann retired from his syndicated column in 1967,[11] and died in 1974.

Legacy: Almond–Lippmann consensus[edit] A meeting of liberal intellectuals mainly from France and Germany organized in Paris in August 1938 by French philosopher Louis Rougier to discuss the ideas put forward by Lippmann in his work Public Opinion (1937), Colloque Walter Lippmann was named after Walter Lippmann. 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, contains sections critical of Lippmann's views about the media.

Similarities between the views of Lippmann and Gabriel Almond produced what became known as the Almond–Lippmann consensus, which is based on three assumptions:[12]

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"[13] Public opinion is incoherent, lacking an organized or a consistent structure to such an extent that the views of U.S. citizens could best be described as "nonattitudes"[14] Public opinion is irrelevant to the policy-making 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."[15][16] Death[edit] Lippmann died on December 14, 1974, at age 85 in New York City.[1]

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 "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" on the 1966 album Phil Ochs in Concert.

Bibliography[edit] A Preface to Politics (1913) ISBN 1-59102-292-4 Drift and Mastery (1914) ISBN 0-299-10604-7 The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915) The Political Scene (1919) Liberty and the News (1920) Public Opinion (1922) ISBN 0-02-919130-0 The Phantom Public (1925) ISBN 1-56000-677-3 Men of Destiny (1927) ISBN 0-295-95026-9 American Inquisitors (1928) A Preface to Morals (1929) ISBN 0-87855-907-8 Interpretations 1931–1932 (1932) The Method of Freedom (1934) The New Imperative (1935) Interpretations 1933–1935 (1936) The Good Society (1937) ISBN 0-7658-0804-8 U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943) U.S. War Aims (1944) The Cold War (1947) ISBN 0-06-131723-3 The Public Philosophy (1955) ISBN 0-88738-791-8 With William O. Scroggs: The United States in World Affairs 1931 (1932) The United States in World Affairs 1932 (1933)

El término neoliberal fue acuñado en 1938 en una conferencia en París. El "Coloquio Lippmann" fue convocado para celebrar la publicación en francés del libro "The Good Society" del estadounidense Walter Lippmann. En el evento participaron pensadores que posteriormente fundarían la sociedad Mont Pelerin, incluyendo el futuro premio Nobel Frederick Hayek.

Walter Lippmann fue uno de los periodistas más influyentes de su época. Políticamente, fue un "progresista". Fue amigo del presidente Franklin D. Roosevelt y de John Maynard Keynes. Sus columnas, publicadas en el Herald Tribune, eran leídas por millones de personas.

A mediados de la década de los 30 del siglo XX, Lippmann empezó a preocuparse por lo que llamó la ascendencia del "colectivismo autoritario". Para él, fascistas, nacionalsocialistas, y comunistas estaban poniendo en jaque a las democracias representativas. Los partidarios de la planificación, dentro de la administración Roosevelt, también representaban un peligro.

Lo preocupante, según Lippmann, era que Occidente no tenía respuestas a estas amenazas. No había un modelo que se contrapusiera en forma exitosa al colectivismo. El liberalismo clásico no era persuasivo, ni tenía respuestas a los desafíos del momento, como el desempleo masivo, los abusos de los conglomerados monopólicos, y la deflación; su insistencia en el laissez faire había culminado en la Gran Depresión.

En 1935, Lippmann escribió una columna adelantando lo que luego plantearía en su famoso libro. Dijo que para enfrentar a estos autoritarismos era necesario fomentar un "liberalismo regenerado". Este sistema estaría basado en un nuevo contrato social: "uno que no sería ni laissez-faire ni colectivismo, ni individualismo a ultranza ni economía planificada". Según Lippmann, este nuevo liberalismo debía "usar el poder para preservar la empresa privada por medio de la regulación de sus abusos y la búsqueda del equilibrio de sus deficiencias".

Este liberalismo regenerado no solo protegería la propiedad privada; además cuidaría el medio ambiente y los recursos naturales; ayudaría a los desvalidos, impulsaría ciudades amables, y protegería a aquellos afectados por el rápido avance del progreso tecnológico. Lippmann también creía en la necesidad de seguir políticas fiscales y monetarias contracíclicas para aminorar los efectos del ciclo económico.

Para Lippmann, el desafío era cómo alcanzar todo lo anterior. Cómo evitar los vicios de la derecha y de la izquierda, las que según él siempre habían amparado "el proteccionismo, los privilegios y los monopolios".

En "The Good Society" Lippmann argumentó que era menester cambiar la institucionalidad legal en democracia. Si se establecían nuevas reglas del juego que equilibraran competencia y seguridad social, un nuevo sistema se desarrollaría en forma espontánea. Había que evitar a toda costa la injerencia directa de la autoridad intrusa, burocrática y pesadamente administrativa.

Como se puede ver, en este planteamiento original sobre "neoliberalismo" no hay capitalismo salvaje ni competencia a ultranza; tampoco pisoteo de los más débiles, o ausencia de regulación.

Durante las últimas décadas, en Chile (casi) no ha habido liberales; tampoco neoliberales, en el sentido de Lippmann. La derecha nacional ha estado dominada por conservadores integristas y, desde hace un tiempo, por neoconservadores llenos de energía. Pero eso es tema de otra historia.