Liberty ain't what you probably think it is. If you don't believe me, read Walter Lippmann's good book.

Walter Lippmann (1889 - 1974), more than 45 years dead, towers over American journalism like the Washington Monument towers over the National Mall. His influence stretches, like a shadow, from near the beginning of the 20th century to its end and beyond.

Lippmann surely never saw a personal computer and probably never dreamed of the Internet. Nevertheless, Lippmann's thought still shapes the content that journalists and wannabes post on the World Wide Web.

High-minded amateurs who set up blogs in revolt against "mainstream" journalism -- many of whom never heard of Walter Lippmann or are but vaguely aware that there once was such a person -- have no idea what he did or thought. Still, they labor under the influence of Lippmann.

Their work, their ideals, their ideas are in part shaped by Lippmann if they know it or if they don't. In sum, it is almost impossible to overstate Lippmann's influence on American news journalism and it is good when something happens that recalls journalism's attention to the life and the thought of Walter Lippmann.

The latest such thing that I've read is a reprint of Lippmann's first book, "Liberty and the News." The original was published in 1920. This latest edition is updated inasmuch as it features a new Foreword by Ronald Steel and an Afterword by Sidney Blumenthal.

Neither Steel nor Blumenthal manages to squeeze any fresh juice out of the book. To treat the modern writers fairly, however, one must allow that after three or four generations of academic journalists and hordes of Gradgrinds (Ask Charles Dickens.) have pored over Liberty and the News with mean-eyed, microscopic intensity, it would require genius of a rare order to find and extract even one drop of additional import from Lippmann's text.

Ronald Steel, for his part, gives us a Foreword that is learned, lucid, concise and useful. Steel needs fewer than 11 pages to background readers on the book. He puts Lippmann's work in context and points out a few of the author's most salient ideas. In so doing, Steel captures and hones the attention of readers who might otherwise be unaware of Lippmann's import and therefore reluctant to stroll for two or three hours through the author's supple-but-sonorous, vintage prose.

Readers who take that brief hike are rewarded, however, for it's likely that many of those who today yell loudest about bias in journalism have no idea that, almost a hundred years ago, thoughtful people were deeply concerned about the same problems. Moreover, it seems likely that those who shout loudest today are so busy shouting about bias in journalism that they're unaware of their own prejudices and of other rotten spots in the craft.

Lippmann called attention not only to bias but to those other rotten spots as well, all of which he contended are mere symptoms of problems much deeper and more profound -- problems that, being rooted in human nature itself, threaten to belie Enlightenment ideals such as truth, justice, democracy, liberty, and scientific government. At the peroration of Chapter 1, for example, Lippmann got up on his hind legs to ask what verdict history will lay upon a nation that, professing a belief in government by the will of the people, was content to make decisions about government on the basis of "facts" reported by a class of people who were and who remain notorious, professional liars. (L&N, 8)

Chapter 2 hits just as hard while asking more and deeper questions. There Lippmann stumped for a new definition of the word "liberty" that might serve us better than the definition we now employ:

"A useful definition of liberty," Lippmann opined, "is obtainable only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their response and learn to control their environment. In this view liberty is the name we give to measures by which we protect and increase the veracity of the information upon which we act." (L&N, 40)

This review understands "Liberty and the News" as the expression of a conflicted genius. On the one hand, Lippmann knew that democracy and scientific government depend absolutely on unrestricted access to accurate information. "There can be no higher law in journalism," he wrote, "than to tell the truth and shame the devil." (L&N, 7) On the other hand, Lippmann knew that the rivers of information from which Americans drink all spring for a poisoned fount. Human nature, he knew, drives some journalists to lie about the facts in exchange for money, position, prestige. Other journalists, afflicted with a more insidious form of the same disease, unknowingly turn fact into falsehood by filtering their reports through a fabric of personal perception, be that perception enlightened or benighted.

The late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once observed that "Journalism is a low profession." Reading "Liberty and the News," one sees clearly that Lippmann would have agreed with Thompson but yet recognized and held fast to a higher truth, namely: If we are to have democracy, there is no other way forward.

Democracy depends upon access to good information. Not to put words in anyone else's mouth, this review observes that there's more to the story than just that. Civilization itself cannot long endure where truth is absent, where nothing is real, where everyone knows that no one can be trusted.

Civilization is not some mere contract that can be broken with impunity and the mess cleaned up by lawyers. Civilization describes a trajectory: the more we know, the more we can trust, the farther away from superstition and barbarism we move. The reverse is also true: the less we know, the less we can trust, the farther we fall back toward superstition and barbarism. Lippmann understood that if the truth must be told, then someone must do the telling. We must have journalism, he concluded, and journalism as we have known it is counterproductive. Therefore, journalism must be reformed.

Lippmann used "Liberty and the News" to call for objective truth in journalism but did not stop there. Though he preferred that journalism be self-regulating, he strongly hinted that government regulation of journalism might prove necessary. "The regulation of the publishing business is a subtle and elusive matter," he argued, "and only by and early and sympathetic effort to deal with great evils can the more sensible minds retain their control. If publishers and authors do not face the facts and attempt to deal with them, some day Congress, in a fit of temper, egged on by an outraged public opinion, will operate on the press with an ax. Somehow the community must find a way of making the men who publish news accept responsibility for an honest effort not to misrepresent the facts." (L&N, 45)

Lippmann also suggested the creation of impartial national and international news bureaus staffed by the finest reporters in the profession. His assertion that "it would be a great gain if the accountability of publishers could be increased." (L&N, 44) implies a belief that a license to practice journalism would not be out of order. He advocated better education for journalists. He marveled that those who cannot be led to tell the truth cannot be locked in jail: "If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor's cow," he wrote, "I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible. Nobody will punish me. . . . (L&N, 24)

"At any rate," Lippmann concluded, "our salvation lies in two things: ultimately, in the infusion of the news-structure by men with a new training and outlook; immediately, in the concentration of the independent forces against the complacency and bad service of the routineers. We shall advance when we have learned humility; when we have learned to see the truth, to reveal it and publish it; when we care more for that than for the privilege of arguing about ideas in a fog of uncertainty." (L&N - 61)

There is much more worth having in "Liberty and the News" and, for all who think seriously about the things of which Lippmann wrote, there is much to carry away. To read in this little book the carefully arranged thoughts of the finest mind in twentieth-century journalism -- a mind shaped in what was then one of the world's finest schools (Harvard), where it was polished by the likes of George Santayana and William James -- is by itself worth much more than the price of Lippmann's little book.

The nadir of Princeton's "Liberty and the News" is Sidney Blumenthal's benighted Afterword. This review does not object to Blumenthal's short list of Lippmann's sins. Among others Blumenthal mentions: "His immersion in politics while holding forth as a disinterested observer. . . ." (L&N. 63) Blumenthal's account of Lippmann's ultimate failure, of his ideals being "traduced, trampled and trashed" (L&N, 64) by journalists and journalism is true and wholly pertinent.

But then Blumenthal throws in a lively and interesting account of events leading up to the mess in which we presently find ourselves, beginning with press coverage of "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy and ending with the outrageously un-American behavior of the press during the outrageously un-American administration of President George W. Bush.

It is at that point that this writer objects to Blumenthal, who was himself a cog in the public-relations machine of the Clinton administration. The Clintons, as the whole world knows, ran the most outrageous lie factory on record if we don't count Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bush Dubya, Barack Hussein Obama and Donald J. Trump.

Blumenthal's experiences and observations from inside the Clinton rats' nest would have made a juicy addition to Mr. Blumenthal's otherwise fine Afterword. Sadly his experience and observations of the Clinton White House get no mention here. Blumenthal's account focuses entirely on Republicans generally, the Republican Party, and George W. Bush. So, presented with an opportunity that cried and begged for a mea culpa, Blumenthal passed and gave as a 'theya culpa.'

Some readers will think about all that and say: "This is all too much. Why make such a fuss over a measly Afterword?"

I make a fuss despite that objection because I see that, with his Afterword, Blumenthal personifies the state of mainstream American journalism. Having helped (during the Clinton administration) bring the profession to ruin and (at the end of "Liberty and the News") having rhetorically interred the ideas and ideals of American journalism's foremost saint, Blumenthal stands clueless amid the carnage and expresses an idiotic hope for the future: ". . . journalism may yet be revitalized," he wrote, "as part of a general reawakening of American democracy that discovers new forms of expression and forces new debate to achieve its ends." (L&N, 87-88)

What a load of manure! After airing a defenseless dead man's dirty linen, Blumenthal cannot bear to bare his own spotted shorts. Ever the good Democrat, he cannot set aside his political bias and tell us -- or even mention -- a tale of the Clinton lie factory. One wonders if Blumenthal is pathologically unconscious of the truth about the Clinton White House (or his personal role therein) and one suspects that if we forget about Walter Lippmann and rely upon the likes of Sidney Blumenthal to lead us down the path to Truth and Democracy, the Blumenthals of this world will lead us to something we do not want and would do better without.

There may yet be a "reawakening of American democracy," and new media may appear. "New forms of expression," however, will never appear because the root form of expression must be and therefore always has been language: spoken, written, manual, transmitted to the human brain by computer icons, works of art or hot, throbbing hormones, any medium of human communication, any "new form of expression" will ultimately rely upon language or communication will not occur. Any "new form of expression" used by liars will lie to us just like the media, just like the "forms of expression" we've already got. As the self-styled Christians who throng our national air waves and public podiums ought to be aware, Jesus once taught the world: ". . . know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)

Lippmann knew that lesson: "Liberty and the News" is his testament. Blumenthal, it seems, is vaguely aware of the argument. At the conclusion of his Afterword, he quotes President James Madison: "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." (L&N, 88)

Were Blumenthal properly armed (Thank you, President Madison.) Blumenthal might see Lippmann's effort and its failure as a tragedy, squarely in the tradition of classical works such as "Oedipus Rex" or "Antigone".

Blumenthal might also have pointed practitioners -- especially youngsters -- to an irony of a spiritual sort that Lippmann's thought and career impart, and the irony is this: Those who come to journalism determined to change the profession will fail and will instead be changed by the profession in ways of which they should properly be ashamed. But those who come to journalism determined to tell the truth, if they remain committed to truth-telling, will change the profession over time in ways of which they can justly be proud, whether they set out to change journalism or not.

All such ironies aside, Walter Lippmann's "Liberty and the News" convinces this reader (at least) that a "reawakened American democracy" (if ever one appears) will have to enact regulation that "forces new debate" because it rewards the truth and punishes the lie.

The Princeton reprint of "Liberty and the News" is great stuff. Journalists, those who aspire to journalism, useful citizens of any democracy have every reason to read Walter Lippmann.

Speaking strictly to journalists: "Liberty and the News" gives old hands an excuse to reminisce their college days and dream the old dreams again; rookies get something new to stretch their minds; everyone gets something important (for a change) to argue about when they're drunk.

Solomon sed.

"Liberty and the News"
Walter Lippmann
ISBN 978-0-691-13480-2
Princeton University Press, 2008, 118 pp.
$8.45 gets a used but good-as-new
hardcover at abebooks.com

Do it. ( )