Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) 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. We have recently added his portraits to the website.

According to Wikipedia, though a journalist himself, Lippmann did not assume that news and truth are synonymous. For Lippmann, the “function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.” A journalist’s version of the truth is subjective and limited to how they construct their reality.  The news, therefore, is “imperfectly recorded” and too fragile to bear the charge as “an organ of direct democracy.”

See another portrait of Walter Lippmann.