Walter Lippmann believed that "the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation". Citizens, he maintained, were too “self-centered to care about public policy except as pertaining to pressing local issues”. Lippmann viewed the purpose of the mass media as "intelligence work" for the greater good of the elite and maintaining the status quo. Within this role, journalists are a link between the elite controllers and the public. A journalist, in Lippmann’s opinion, should seek facts from the controlling influences to then transmit
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