PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

faction, rearranging certain jobs, placating a group of people who
want an arsenal in their home town, or a law to stop somebody's vices.
Study the daily activity of any public official who depends on
election and you can enlarge this list. There are Congressmen elected
year after year who never think of dissipating their energy on public
affairs. They prefer to do a little service for a lot of people on a
lot of little subjects, rather than to engage in trying to do a big
service out there in the void. But the number of people to whom any
organization can be a successful valet is limited, and shrewd
politicians take care to attend either the influential, or somebody so
blatantly uninfluential that to pay any attention to him is a mark of
sensational magnanimity. The far greater number who cannot be held by
favors, the anonymous multitude, receive propaganda.
The established leaders of any organization have great natural
advantages. They are believed to have better sources of information.
The books and papers are in their offices. They took part in the
important conferences. They met the important people. They have
responsibility. It is, therefore, easier for them to secure attention
and to speak in a convincing tone. But also they have a very great
deal of control over the access to the facts. Every official is in
some degree a censor. And since no one can suppress information,
either by concealing it or forgetting to mention it, without some
notion of what he wishes the public to know, every leader is in some
degree a propagandist. Strategically placed, and compelled often to
choose even at the best between the equally cogent though conflicting
ideals of safety for the institution, and candor to his public, the
official finds himself deciding more and more consciously what facts,
in what setting, in what guise he shall permit the public to know.
4
That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no
one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is
certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and
the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the
process are plain enough.
The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which
was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it
has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic,
because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And
so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern
means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner.
A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any
shifting of economic power.
Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs,