"Public Opinion" -- Walter Lippman

Lippmann -- Public Opinion

Introduction
Lippman points out the obvious -- that nobody can make decisions based only on things their know empirically -- at some point, everyone must rely upon someone else's (friend, mass media, teacher) communication to make decisions

P. 16:
"This, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him."

But everybody comes up with their own beliefs in a complicated fashion -- not just by what their told.

p. 17:
"The very fact that men theorize at all is proof that their psuedo-environments, their interior representations of the world, are a determining element in though, feeling and action."

"Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them."

So, don't think figuring out why people think what they think is easy -- it's not. Particularly with politics.

Wikipedia's Hermeneutics definition appears appropriate:
"Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook."
Lippman was a little ahead of his time...

P. 18
"The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight and out of mind." -- so, we have to create our own images.

And it's impossible to create a real image of what's out of sight.

"Chief factors which limit their access to the facts": (p 18)
1) Artificial censorships
2) Limitations of social contact
3) Comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs
4) Distortion from compressing complicated events into shot messages
5) Difficulty in using simple words to express complicated world
6) Fear of facing facts that would threaten established routines

Interesting. But, must the public have access to all these facts to engage in rational-critical debate?
Perhaps a belief, based on previous experience, nullifies the need for specific knowledge of facts.

belief that corporations will always screw over the little guy
belief that free-market works best
belief that we live in a constructed reality
belief that higher taxes hurt job creation

Points out that socialists believe there "exists in the hearts of men a knowledge of the world beyond their reach." (p. 19) Is that true?

States flatly that we must drop the "intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must acquire a competent opinion about all public affairs." (p. 19). Is this true?

Yes, but that's not necessarily bad

I don't know anything about insuring a car either -- why must I? Everyone has different interests
NOT ELITISM
Elitism is thinking that you're the only one smart enough to make decisions about public affairs because the public are stupid.
Lipppman isn't saying that (according to my reading)
A more realistic view is that some people just don't care -- doesn't mean they couldn't do a great job if they did care.
We shouldn't confuse "interest in public affairs" with "competence in managing public affairs"

In the Phantom Public, here's a little more elitist: "The socialist scheme has at its root the mystical fallacy of democracy, that the people, all of them, are competent." (1925, p. 38)

But, still, he's just saying that some people don't pay enough attention to make their vote worthwhile. Is this elitism? (No.)

Concludes introduction by saying: "That public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today."
Makes sense too -- he's just saying that journalists don't necessarily know the right way to look at things either
Obviously, you want to have competing interests shaping their opinions. Otherwise you'd just get propaganda.

Stereotypes
Makes the case that you can't not have stereotypes:
p. 60
"But there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so inevitible that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impoverish human life."
Great point -- right?
We do teach about high-context and low-context cultures in SPCH 1000 -- that's a stereotype.

But he points out that we must be careful: "What matters is the character of the sterotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them."

How do we do that? Hermeneutics:

Don't assume that the world is "codified according to a code which we possess." Instead, understand the "each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects of a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly."
p. 60

Intelligence work
Wow! He predicted the creation of the CIA!

"The [State] Department should be able to call on its own intelligence bureau to assemble the facts in a way suited to the diplomatic problem up for decision. And these facts the diplomatic intelligence bureau would obtain from the central clearing house."

"The central agency would, thus, have in it the makings of a national university."
p. 246

Toward the end, he offers some viewpoints on the masses:

"You cannot take more political wisdom out of human beings than there is in them. And no reform, however sensational, is truly radical, which does not consciously provide a way of overcoming the subjectivism of human opinion based on the limitation of individual experience." P. 249

So, we've really got to make sure people don't just vote on what they think they know -- so, we must make sure we inform them correctly.
So that they do not "elaborate their prejudice instead of increasing their knowledge."
But, who gets to decide what they know?
He never really says, other than deciders must influence the press
I'm not sure he believes one entity must decide.
Marketplace of ideas, and whatnot.

The appeal to the public
States the obvious again:
"The amount of attention available is far too small for any scheme in which it was assumed that all the citizens of the nation would, after devoting themselves to the publications of all the intelligence bureaus, become alert, informed, and eager on the multitude of real questions that never do fit very well into any broad principle. I am not making that assumption." p.250

"The purpose, then, is not to burden every citizen with expert opinions on all questions, but to push that burden away from him towards the responsible administrator."

This is very different from: "The public are stupid"

Lippman understood the dangers of the press controlling the message:

"For the practice of appealing to the public on all sorts of intricate matters means almost always a desire to escape criticism from those who know by enlisting a large majority which has had no chance to know. The verdict is made to depend on who has the loudest or the most entrancing voice, the most skillful or the most brazen publicity man, the best access to the most space in the newspapers. For even when the editor is scrupulously fair to "the other side," fairness is not enough. There may be several other sides, unmentioned by any of the organized, financed and active partisans."

Seems reasonable.

"The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence."

Calls for experts to hash things out:
"That can be done by having the representative inside carry on discussion in the presence of some one, chairman or mediator, who forces the discussion to deal with the analyses supplied by experts. This is the essential organization of any representative body dealing with distant matters. The partisan voices should be there, but the partisans should find themselves confronted with men, not personally involved, who control enough facts and have the dialectical skill to sort out what is real perception from what is stereotype, pattern and elaboration..."

"The value of expert mediation is not that it sets up opinion to coerce the partisans, but that it disintegrates partisanship." p. 253

Expert mediation didn't really settle the case of Bush v. Gore, though.
Conservatives thought it was great; liberals decried it -- no partisanship disintegration

So, Lippman's got a great message up to a point -- but he loses me on the "experts make the decisions" -- are the public to simply let the experts figure out everything and never question anything? Seems untenable.

Agrees with Dewey, says that "education is the supreme remedy, the value of this education will depend upon the evolution of knowledge. And our knowledge of human institutions is still extraordinarily meager and impressionistic."

But, just because we're educated, doesn't mean will can interpret facts correctly.

Suggests teaching critical thought:
"What he can do is to prepare them to deal with that world with a great deal more sophistication about their own minds. He can, by the use of the case method, teach the pupil the habit of examining the sources of his information."
Do we teach this now?

I don't think so; I think we teach that there's one correct way to look at the world.