| Title | Chapter 3: Liberty and the News |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Walter Lippmann (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.32376/3f8575cb.75aef417 |
| Landing page | https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/tf26m66t/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ |
| Publisher | mediastudies.press |
| Published on | 2020-11-15 |
| Short abstract | THE debates about liberty have hitherto all been attempts to determine just when in the series from Right to Left the censorship should intervene. |
| Long abstract | THE debates about liberty have hitherto all been attempts to determine just when in the series from Right to Left the censorship should intervene. In the preceding paper I ventured to ask whether these attempts do not turn on a misconception of the problem. The conclusion reached was that, in dealing with liberty of opinion, we were dealing with a subsidiary phase of the whole matter; that, so long as we were content to argue about the privileges and immunities of opinion, we were missing the point and trying to make bricks without straw. We should never succeed even in fixing a standard of tolerance for opinions, if we concentrated all our attention on the opinions. For they are derived, not necessarily by reason, to be sure, but somehow, from the stream of news that reaches the public, and the protection of that stream is the critical interest in a modern state. In going behind opinion to the information which it exploits, and in making the validity of the news our ideal, we shall be fighting the battle where it is really being fought. We shall be protecting for the public interest that which all the special interests in the world are most anxious to corrupt. |
| Page range | pp. 23–33 |
| Print length | 11 pages |