The Press and Public Opinion

T WOULD be seriously misleading an audience serious and methodical | inquirers if I attempted to deal with aspects this matter which I have Pnot had personal expenence. I cannot, for example, judge the value and effect public opinion polls on questions foreign policy, for I have nelrer worked on a newspaper which ran them; and I have had no opportunity to see how they are conducted. Nor can I assess accurately how much Ministers are affected by public opinion in their conduct foreign policy, not having been a politician. My impression is that when fundamental policy is in the making, public opinion plays little part. But when that policy goes into action and meets with success or failure, then public opinion can play a decisive part. Nor am I at all certain what is meant by the phrase public opinion or how it should be defined for your purposes, although I hope to throw some light on this in due course. Nor, finally, am I certain that the investigation in which we are engaged can be conducted apart from a much wider investigation into the sources power in our political life, a matter which I understand very little. bIay I clear the decks a Little further before coming to the subject the press and its role in forming public opinion on foreign policy ? I am sorry to say that I cannot give you facts in a form which facilitates classification and quantitative analysis. As I hope to show you, the business producing newspapers and periodicals is a deeply personal one, in which different factors play powerful parts at different times. Among them do not overlook illness, chance, carelessness, whim or misunderstanding. If you wosh for examples I suggest you examine such records as the History of The Times , especially the last volume, or any detailed political biography where the subject's relations with the press are recorded in detail. It is, perhaps, because this personal quality in journalism that so little has been written about what goes on in the minds editors and their assistants. A true account would need a most

Political science · Politics · Public opinion · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

• La lucha institucional contra la propaganda de las grandes empresas estadounidenses durante la Gran Depresión

  Open Access•Dario Migliucci•Historia Contemporánea•2022

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