… As Walter Lippmann first argued in “Public Opinion” (1922), people in mass societies interpret the modern world through the “pictures” and “fictions” in their heads. The “pseudo-environments” they inhabit are made comprehensible only through the “stereotypes” that enable them to make sense of an otherwise chaotic reality, and for that reason citizens are more susceptible than ever to advertising and propaganda.
Disregard for truth has been central to authoritarian governments since the 1930s, when totalitarian regimes manipulated the public by controlling access to information and silencing those who dared protest. That strategy has now matured in the United States, where countless falsehoods masquerade as truth 24/7 on Fox News Channel and in the ever-expanding right-wing blogosphere. These distortions are deliberate. They are calculated to create a fact-free world in which there are only opinions, the louder and more melodramatically shouted, the better. CONT.
James T. Kloppenberg (Harvard), Washington Post