Role of Media in Society

MSTU 1000
Humber College
Professor: Steven May
Contact: steven.may@humber.ca

Week 8: Media and Theory

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 Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion. 1922.
Chapter I: The World Outside and the Pictures in our Heads

• PART I, Chapter I: “For six strange weeks they had acted as if they
were friends, when in fact they were enemies”.
• PART I, Chapter I : “(T)he most interesting kind of portraiture is
that which arises spontaneously in people’s minds”.
• PART I, Chapter I“(T)hese fictions determine a very great part of
men’s political behaviour”.
• PART I, Chapter I : “(P)ublic opinion deals with indirect, unseen,
and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them”.
• PART I, Chapter I : “The pictures inside the heads of these human
beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs,
purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those
pictures which are acting upon by groups of people, or by
individuals acting the name of groups, are Public Opinion with
capital letters”.
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 Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion. 1922.
Chapter I: The World Outside and the Pictures in our Heads

• PART I, Chapter I: “I argue that representative

government, either in what is ordinarily called
politics, or in industry, cannot be worked
successfully, no matter what the basis of election,
unless there is an independent, expert organization
for making the unseen facts intelligible to those
who have to make the decisions”.
• PART I, Chapter I : “My conclusion is that public
opinions must be organized by the press if they are
to be sound, not by the press as is the case today”.
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 Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion. 1922.
Chapter XXIV: News, Truth, and a Conclusion

• CHAPTER XXIV: “News and truth are not the same

thing, and must be clearly distinguished.”
• CHAPTER XXIV: “It is because they are compelled
to act without a reliable picture of the world, that
governments, schools, newspapers and churches
make such small headway against the more
obvious failings of democracy, against violent
prejudice, apathy, preference for the curious trivial
as against the dull important, and the hunger for
sideshows and three legged calves”.