the article is here; introduction:
In the final months of 1919, the pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people and left cities across the country ravaged by racist pogroms and mob violence. Walter Lippmann reflected on the state of the American public sphere. „Nations easily act like mobs. Under the influence of headlines and panicky print, unreasonable epidemics can easily spread throughout settled communities,“ he complained. The press was full of fiction and propaganda. Americans have „stopped responding to truth and only reacting to opinion.“ There was no way to even know if people weren't intentionally and cynically lying to the public. I choose the right set of lies, completely irresponsible. ” The public was acting not in response to objective social reality, but in response to what Lippmann called a “pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and speculation.” How, he wondered, could democracy function in such an environment?
Over the next few years, Lippmann sought to answer this question, publishing a series of books that are perhaps the most serious effort yet to think through the problems, possibilities, and limits of public opinion in contemporary American democracy. We develop two key insights about democratic theory that can help us, especially today, when another generation of Americans views public spaces full of fake news, rumors, and cynical lies with disdain and despair. Did.
The first was his rejection of what he called the myth of the „omnipotent citizen.“ Lippmann argued that Americans cling to „the intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must obtain a competent voice in all public affairs.“ It simply wasn't possible. American society was too complex, too vast, and too differentiated. The division of labor was too deep, social life too confusing, a kaleidoscope of changing experiences. And the pace and development of political activity, moving from crisis to crisis and issue to issue, made it impossible for the people to catch their breath. How could anyone expect, between work, leisure, and family, that one night there would be a pondering of international trade policy, a labor strike the next, and a public health scandal the next?
Inevitably, individuals had to rely on others to understand what was going on and had to form their own opinions within their social and political environment, Lipman said. It pointed out. But no one seriously addressed what this meant for the operation of democracy, as people continued to assume that opinions were formed and expressed by autonomous individuals. The result has been a tendency to think of issues of public opinion as a matter of individual rights, that is, of regulations and prohibitions that affect the way individuals exchange opinions. And that meant that „Democrats have treated the issue of forming public opinion as a civil liberties issue.“ They focused on debating whether individuals have the right to express certain ideas, assuming that public opinion emerges from a marketplace of competing arguments.
But in Lippmann's second important insight, he pointed out that this is completely the wrong way to think about issues of public opinion. In discussing „privileges and immunities of opinion,“ he explained, „we were missing the point and trying to make bricks without straw.“ What was really important was the „flow of news'' that served as the basis for opinions. „By ignoring the opinions that the information exploits and idealizing the legitimacy of the news, we will be fighting where the battles are actually being fought.“ Rather than thinking about who people are, what they say, or what rights should be accorded to which classes of political expression, we ask how society as a whole organizes its political economy of information. It meant thinking about.
In this essay, I would like to use these two points as a guide to thinking about how best to navigate the contemporary crisis in the American public sphere. Our fears about the spread of fake news (lies about stolen elections, harmful vaccines, deep state conspiracies, etc.) are driven by the extent to which certain forms of expressive (mis)behavior affect the (in)ability of individual citizens. This continues to take the form of anxiety about the impact it will have. As a result, the most commonly proposed remedies, especially the temptation to regulate lies, focus on privileges and immunities of opinion. In short, we are trying to remove fake news from the political arena by viewing it as an unwarranted cancerous growth.
Based on Lippmann's analysis, I would argue that this is a mistaken way of thinking about a very real problem of American democratic life. The discussion will proceed in three parts. Part 1, inspired by Lippmann's point that lies have been a problem for more than a century, examines the lies of current political conservatives from McCarthy and their forebears in the days of mass resistance. Compare with lies. The success of angry, conspiratorial, and racist lies, even in the disparate media environment of the post-World War II “Golden Age,” makes the lies of the present moment an unprecedented epistemological phenomenon. I suggest that it helps to recognize it not as a crisis, but as an expression of a problem. Conservative political formation in American politics.
In the second part, I argue that this political system is benefiting from a broader crisis in the US information economy. I use Lippmann's distinction between the „news flow“ and the politics of representation to demonstrate the collapse of journalism as a profession. It has led to an underproduction of information in politics and has encouraged politics of outrageous expression. Both have benefited conservative political establishments seeking to win elections through lies. With this understanding of contemporary issues, the third part explores solutions to the current pervasive lies.
Following Lippmann's reform proposals from 1919, the key challenge was the broader politics of restoring democracy, and by encouraging the production of information in new institutions dedicated to that task, the „flow of news“ could be improved. It claims to include new initiatives to improve the situation. Such reform efforts should be contrasted with efforts to address lies by eradicating or countering them directly in discourse, such as through censorship, public education, or mandatory counter-speech. . By focusing on the politics of opinion rather than information, reform efforts centered on speech laws and acts risk exacerbating, rather than ameliorating, the crisis in American democracy.