Three essays by Walter Lippmann, published in 1920, on what a free press owes to the public and how the news is gathered and selected: "Journalism and the Higher Law", "What Modern Liberty Means" and "Liberty and the News". The archive's page on Lippmann's Public Opinion places it between the war and that book, arguing that the press was failing to supply reliable facts, and cites it in its notes. This is the whole book, with the author's preface.
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- Author's Preface 119 words
- Journalism and the Higher Law 2,081 words
- What Modern Liberty Means 7,058 words
- Liberty and the News 5,081 words
Download as plain text 14,339 words, with the provenance header above the text
Provenance and rights
- Edition
- Liberty and the News. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920 (two of the three essays first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, 1919; Project Gutenberg's proofread transcription)
- Text source
- Project Gutenberg, ebook #77035
- Text basis
- Proofread transcription by Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders.
- Rights
- Published in the United States in 1920 (the Atlantic Monthly essays in 1919), so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Lippmann died in 1974, so a life-plus-70 term still runs in some other countries. Checked October 2, 2026.
- Changes made
- Line wraps rejoined and headings set in title case; the Project Gutenberg licence header and footer removed. Wording, spelling and punctuation are the source's own. The book's contents list is left out.
- Source file checksum
d227b37911837484…(SHA-256 of the download this text was made from)