Liberty and the News

Abstract

Liberty and the News was published a century ago, the young Walter Lippmann’s fifth book. The slim volume merits a fresh read in our post-truth moment. “In an exact, sense,” Lippmann writes, “the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism.” For Lippmann, liberty constitutes a method, not a series of prohibitions and permissions. The book’s aim is to identify and examine potential reforms to boost the reliability of news—a project as relevant today as it is unfinished. Liberty and the News is republished in this mediastudies.press edition with a new introduction by Sue Curry Jansen.