Public Opinion

(THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1922)

Introduction

Public Opinion (1922)

The triangular relationship between Political Power, Mass Media and public Opinion:

Public Opinion Defined

“Public Opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts” (125)

Newspapers / Mass Media

• “Universally it is admitted that the press is the chief means of contact with the unseen environment.” (320)
• “The most important of these is that each of us tends to judge a newspaper, if we judge it at all, by its treatment of that part of the news in which we feel involved ourselves.” (328)
• “The newspaper deals with a multitude of events beyond our experience. But it deals also with some events within our experience. And by its handling of those events we most frequently decide to like it or dislike it, to trust it or to refuse to have the sheet in the house. If the newspaper gives a satisfactory account of that which we think we know, our business, our church, our party, it is fairly certain to be immune from violent criticism by us. What better criterion does the man at the breakfast table posses than the newspaper version checks up with his own opinion?” (329)
• “Ethically, a newspaper is judged as if it were a church or a school.” (321)
• “A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future customers.” (323f)
• “A newspaper that can really depend upon the loyalty of its readers is as independent as a newspaper can be, given the economics of modern journalism.” (326)
• “Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole series of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what position they shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what emphasis each shall we have.” (354)
• “The fact that is sensational to the reader is the fact that almost every journalist will seek.” (351)
• “News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification.” (355)
• “… news and truth are not the same thing, and must be clearly distinguished. The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to the light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.” (358)
• “The newspapers are regarded by democrats as a panacea for their own defects, whereas analysis of the nature of news and of the economic basis of journalism seems to show that the newspapers necessarily and inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.” (32)
• “The press, in other words, has come to be regarded as an organ of direct democracy, charged on a much wider scale, and from day to day, with the function attributed to the initiative, referendum, and recall. The Court of Public Opinion, open day and night, is to lay down the law for everything all the time. It is not workable. And when you consider the nature of news, it is not even thinkable.” (363)

The Front page

(1974)

• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writer: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. (Iz) Diamond
• Play: Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur
  • Other film adaptations:
    • His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
    • Switching Channels (Ted Kotcheff, 1988)
• Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Susan Sarandon