Faded Metaphors: Walter Lippmann and the Rhetoric of News

Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion, published in 1922, focuses on the techniques of creation and news sharing soon after the conclusion of World War I. His analysis is inspired by the complexity of the political scenario designed by the Treaty of Versailles and defined by Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, in line with the wider debate concerning the juxtaposition of winners and losers. The social impact of newspapers, along with the diffusion of radio and reproducible contents, reveals not only the rapid functional shifts of public opinion within urban areas but also the transformation of collective information in an era characterized by embedded stereotypes, nationalistic symbols and popular myths. Lippmann’s work demonstrated that stereotypes, symbols and myths were not to be underestimated in the years that herald the growth of totalitarianism, especially if referred to propaganda techniques and informative persuasion. The construction of mass consensus depends on the rhetorical patterns inspiring the journalistic discourse, as Lippmann underlines: “Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors” (Lippmann, Public opinion. Adansonia Publishing, 2018, p. 32). Hence the accurate analysis of the social impact of reporters and press agents ahead of the electric fallout of recent decades in order to probe the “nature of news” and foster “the detection of stereotypes” influencing public opinion.