Liberty and the news

What Hacker News says

1. yesenadamDec 2019
   I really loved and got a lot from his early books like Liberty and the News–about how democracy needs good journalism–and Public Opinion–about how public opinion was manipulated in WW1, and many other things. I've read it many times, one of my favourites. A Preface to Morals was the first Lippmann book I read, decades ago, and have read many times since. It's about..philosophy/spirituality and the deep needs of civilization.

   Forgive me sharing a passage from Public Opinion, one of my favourite bits from any book. I call it "Two sides to a fact":

   The statement is, I think, susceptible of overwhelming proof, that moral codes assume a particular view of the facts. Under the term moral codes I include all kinds: personal, family, economic, professional, legal, patriotic, international. At the center of each there is a pattern of stereotypes about psychology, sociology, and history. The same view of human nature, institutions or tradition rarely persists through all codes. There is a war supposed to affect all alike. Two men are partners in business. One enlists; the other takes a war contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps even his life. He is paid a dollar a day, and no one says, no one believes, that you could make a better soldier out of him by any form of economic incentive. That motive disappears out of his human nature. The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a handsome profit over costs, and few say or believe that he would produce the munitions if there were no economic incentive. That may be unfair to him. The point is that the accepted patriotic code assumes one kind of human nature, the commercial code another. And the codes are probably founded on true expectations to this extent, that when a man adopts a certain code he tends to exhibit the kind of human nature which the code demands.

   That is one reason why it is so dangerous to generalize about human nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These versions differ by codes in the same person, the codes differ somewhat among persons in the same social set, differ widely as between social sets, and between two nations, or two colours, may differ to the point where there are no common assumptions whatever. That is why people professing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war. The element of their belief which determines conduct is that view of the facts which they assume.

   That is where codes enter so subtly and so persuasively into the making of public opinion. The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them. That is why, with the best will in the world, the news policy of a journal tends to support its editorial policy; why a capitalist sees one set of facts, and certain aspects of human nature, literally sees them; his socialist opponent another set and other aspects, and why each regards the other as unreasonable or perverse, when the real difference between them is a difference of perception. That difference is imposed by the difference between the capitalist and socialist pattern of stereotypes. “There are no classes in America,” writes an American editor. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” says the Communist Manifesto. If you have the editor’s pattern in your mind, you will see vividly the facts that confirm it, vaguely and ineffectively those that contradict. If you have the communist pattern, you will not only look for different things, but you will see with a totally different emphasis what you and the editor happen to see in common. ...

   And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgements or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit, we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and consequently in the treacherous character of all opposition. For while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a “question”, they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a “fact.” And they never do believe it until after long critical education, they are fully conscious of how second-hand and subjective is their apprehension of the social data.

   So where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty. If the pattern fits their experience at a crucial point, they no longer look upon it as an interpretation. They look upon it as “reality”. It may not resemble the reality, except that it culminates in a conclusion which fits a real experience.

   ...For the opponent presents himself as the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and seen another aspect of it. That would shake the whole scheme. – Public Opinion, 1922, p81

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2. dalbasalFeb 2019
   Walter Lippmann warned about a century ago, in his seminal “Liberty and the News.” "Men who have lost their grip upon the relevant facts of their environment are the inevitable victims of agitation and propaganda. The quack, the charlatan, the jingo . . . can flourish only where the audience is deprived of independent access to information"

   I no longer agree with this, personally. Politics is not a truth-seeking exercise. It's no science, law or even journalism. It's an allegiance & authority forming exercise. Part of that is forming a supporting narrative but this is more an output than an input. Truth may inform or that narrative, but only somewhat, and so do other things.

   You can almost define a "political issue" as one where identity & allegiance shapes opinions more than fact. Imagine most any conflict. Russians & Ukrainians. Israelis and Palestinians, etc. Most people's political position is dictated by their national identity. No facts will convince most Russian nationalists that Ukraine has a moral right to crimea.

   When a question is political enough, facts are subservient to opinion. People will engage with facts that support their opinion, not the other way.

   In fact, even the terms "facts," "opinion," or "truth" are somewhat misleading. The operative concepts in politics are "identity," "allegiance" and feelings.

   (1)identity in this sense: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

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3. yesenadamJan 2019
   Have you read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) - well worth reading and rereading. The theme of it in a way is "that people do not know objective truth, and can be fooled by propaganda" It's about things he observed in WWI, the role of the media, the failure of the media, the start of the propaganda age.. My point is - none of these problems are new. Lippmann was writing about very similar problems 100 years ago. (In that and his other early books, e.g. Liberty and the News - on how somehow, we don't require journalists be qualified, although they have such a vital role in democracy.) It's hard to think that democracy is possible, given these problems.

   (Saward in his Democracy says that Schumpeter in the mid-20th C simply redefined 'democracy' as 'whatever they now have in countries we call democratic', thus avoiding the worrying about democracy that produced the fascinating books of the early 20th C on problems with it. e.g. Lippmann's, Michels' Political Parties)

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