The Issue: In Chapters 4 & 5, Lippmann describes the imperfect processes by which we receive information, as well as both the openness and relativity of the English language and a single word.
Major Strength: Lippmann is growing on me. His arguments are very broad, sure, but they were certainly ahead of his time in the 1920’s and provide for essential baseline ideas. In these particular chapters, I enjoyed the fact that Lippmann incorporated more quantitative justification, though it was tough to follow at first. His analogies still provided the greatest insight, however. I appreciated the driver vs. rider comparison to the way news is understood by the writer (who was present for whatever is being reported) and the reader (whose knowledge of the situation is diminished to a few inches of copy, shaved down from the full story for the purpose of quick, universal consumption by the mass public). Lippmann succinctly illustrates his point that much is lost in translation between a writer/reporter’s experience and the condensed, scripted piece we normally see.
Major Weakness: A minor weakness to this section of Lippmann’s work is perhaps that it does not account for current developments in information gathering and reporting. This, of course, is to no fault of his own; we can’t expect him to have been able to see nearly one hundred years in advance. However, I think this argument of condensed content was much more applicable to the times of single news outlets serving as the “watch dogs” for their communities. Now, with so many reports coming from so many different places and people, it’s much easier to piece together more information to have a more accurate account of news stories. This includes the abundance of photo and video we now see in news stories.
Underlying Assumption: Lippmann is trying to push the fact that consumers of media only get a brief glimpse into a story and should assume that there are more important pieces that are not yet obtained. He also assumes that these incomplete stories lead us to developing stereotypes and connecting the dots via such heuristics.
Provocative Questions: I really wish this was something that could be quantified; I’d be interested to see just how much more we get out of a news story with multiple outlets and reports, as well as images of what happened. Lippmann also points to the fact that the majority of media consumers rarely question its derivative; do consumers give media too much benefit of the doubt today? The news landscape has obviously changed with the integration of social media into the information cycle; how does something like Twitter affect Lippmann’s argument?