Transcript The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads

The World Outside and the
Pictures in Our Heads
Walter Lippmann
Famous Quotes
• The world that we have to deal with is out
of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to
be explored, reported, and imagined.
• My Quote: “The media may be our ears
and eyes, but they must not take the place
of our minds.”
Fact or Fiction:
The Mystery of the Great Men
• Great men, even during their lifetimes, are
usually known to the public only through a
fictitious personality
• Hero worship: the experience of General
Joffre
• Imagined war: between two
countries=between two opposing
personages?
Two Environments
• Real environments vs. pseudoenvironment
“To traverse the world men need maps of
the world.”
Men act upon their environment, moved by
stimuli from their pseudo-environments;
they live in the same world, but they feel
and think in different ones.
Propaganda & Public Opinion
• Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and
puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious
about them
• Public opinion: the pictures inside the heads of
these human beings, the pictures of themselves,
of others, of their needs, purposes, and
relationships
• Those pictures which are acted upon by groups
of people, or by individuals acting in the name of
groups
Conclusion
• Public opinion must be organized
for the press if they are to be
sound, not by the press as is the
case today.