Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974)[1] was an American writer, reporter, and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of the Cold War, coining the term "stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, as well as critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 Public Opinion.[2][3]
For the Jewish and ethnic community leader and advocate of multiculturalism in Australia, see Walter Max Lippmann.
Walter Lippmann
September 23, 1889
New York City, U.S.
December 14, 1974 (aged 85)
New York City, U.S.
- Writer
- journalist
- political commentator
1911–1971
Founding editor of New Republic, Public Opinion
Pulitzer Prize (1958, 1962) Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
Faye Albertson (m. 1917; div. 1937)
Helen Byrne (m. 1938)
Lippmann also played a notable role as research director of Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I board of inquiry. His views on 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 Khrushchev.[4][5]
He has also been highly praised with titles ranging from "most influential" journalist[6][7][8] of the 20th century to "Father of Modern Journalism".[9][10] Michael Schudson writes[11] that James W. Carey considered Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion as "the founding book of modern journalism" and also "the founding book in American media studies".[12]
Early life and education[edit]
Lippmann was born on New York's Upper East Side as the only child of Jewish parents of German origin. According to his biographer Ronald Steel, he grew up in a "gilded Jewish ghetto".[13] His father Jacob Lippmann was a rentier who had become wealthy through his father's textile business and his father-in-law's real estate speculation. His mother, Daisy Baum, cultivated contacts in the highest circles, and the family regularly spent its summer holidays in Europe. The family had a Reform Jewish orientation; averse to "orientalism", they attended Temple Emanu-El. Walter had his Reform Jewish confirmation instead of the traditional Bar Mitzvah at the age of 14. Lippmann was emotionally distanced from both parents, but had closer ties to his maternal grandmother. The political orientation of the family was Republican.[14]
From 1896 Lippmann attended the Sachs School for Boys, followed by the Sachs Collegiate Institute, an elite and strictly secular private school in the German Gymnasium tradition, attended primarily by children of German-Jewish families and run by the classical philologist Julius Sachs, a son-in-law of Marcus Goldmann from the Goldman-Sachs family. Classes included 11 hours of ancient Greek and 5 hours of Latin per week.[14]
Shortly before his 17th birthday, he entered Harvard University where he wrote for The Harvard Crimson[15] and studied under George Santayana, William James, and Graham Wallas, concentrating upon philosophy and languages (he spoke German and French). He took only one course in history and one in government. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society,[16] though important social clubs rejected Jews as members.[17]
Lippmann became a member, alongside Sinclair Lewis, of the New York Socialist Party.[18] In 1911, Lippmann served as secretary to George R. Lunn, the first Socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York, during Lunn's first term. Lippmann resigned his post after four months, finding Lunn's programs to be worthwhile in and of themselves, but inadequate as socialism.[19]
Later life[edit]
After the fall of the British colony Singapore in February 1942, Lippmann authored an influential Washington Post column that criticized empire and called on western nations to "identify their cause with the freedom and security of the peoples of the East" and purge themselves of "white man's imperialism".[27]
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 elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1947 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1949.[28][29]
Lippmann was an informal adviser to several presidents.[8] On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson presented Lippmann with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[30] He later feuded with Johnson over his handling of the Vietnam War of which Lippmann had become highly critical.[8]
He won a special Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1958, as a 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."[4] 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."[5]
Lippmann retired from his syndicated column in 1967.[31]
Lippmann died in New York City due to cardiac arrest in 1974.[32][1]
Influence on mass culture[edit]
Lippmann was an early and influential commentator on mass culture, notable not for criticizing or rejecting mass culture entirely but discussing how it could be worked with by a government licensed "propaganda machine" to keep democracy functioning. In his first book on the subject, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann said that 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".
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.
In 1943, George Seldes described Lippmann as one of the two most influential columnists in the United States.[39][40]
From the 1930s to the 1950s, Lippmann 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.[41] The book was very poorly received in liberal circles.[42]
Private life[edit]
Lippmann was married twice, the first time from 1917 to 1937 to Faye Albertson (*23 March 1893 – 17 March 1975). Faye Albertson was the daughter of Ralph Albertson, a pastor of the Congregational Church. He was one of the pioneers of Christian socialism and the social gospel movement in the spirit of George Herron. During his studies at Harvard, Walter often visited the Albertsons' estate in West Newbury, Massachusetts, where they had founded a socialist cooperative, the (Cyrus Field) Willard Cooperative Colony.
Lippmann was divorced by Faye Albertson to be able to marry Helen Byrne Armstrong in 1938 (died 16 February 1974), daughter of James Byrne. She divorced her husband Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the editor of Foreign Affairs. He was the only close friend in Lippmann's life. The friendship and involvement in Foreign Affairs ended when a hotel in Europe accidentally forwarded Lippmann's love letters to Mr. Armstrong.[48]
In popular culture[edit]
He was mentioned in the monologue before Phil Ochs' recording of "The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo" on the 1966 album Phil Ochs in Concert.