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Our Columnists on the A-Bomb*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Janet Besse  and
Harold D. Lasswell
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Extract

Opinion differs about the role of syndicated columnists in the forming of national opinion and in the decision-making process in the United States. Our columnists have been the subject of pioneering studies, but we have a long way to go before the picture can be called historically complete, scientifically precise, or fully satisfactory for policy-making purposes. What the columnists say is an important chapter in the history of the American public, and history is most useful for critical purposes when written close to the event. The general theory of communication and politics can be refined as the details of the opinion process are more fully known.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , October 1950 , pp. 72 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1950

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References

1 A valuable recent publication is Weingast, David Elliott, Walter Lippmann: A Study in Personal Journalism, New Brunswick, Rutgers Univ. Press, 1949.Google Scholar

2 The Commission on Freedom of the Press, in a widely endorsed recommendation, suggested that the function of reporting upon the performance of mass media should be undertaken by a continuing agency equipped with a competent staff. All branches of the communication process, not excluding the columnists and their audiences, can profit from the warning and spur of criticism.

3 As Leonard S. Cottrell Jr., and Sylvia Eberhart have pointed out, there is no solid evidence to support the opinion that many Americans had or have a sense of guilt for having dropped the bomb on Japan. (See American Opinion on World Affairs in the Atomic Age, Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1948.)

4 Cottrell, and Eberhart, , op. cit., p. 16.Google Scholar

5 The nuclear scientists who became active in 1945, and whose principal organ was the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, undoubtedly had more to do with establishing certain assumptions of fact in the minds of opinion leaders than any other authoritative group. We give attention to their role in a later report.

6 Samuel Grafton, whose columns are summarized for the early period, took as his principal theme the need of a friendly and cooperative world atmosphere before any plan can mean anything. He recommended patient direct negotiation with the Soviet Union. Grafton was forthright in saying that the U.S. must have a strong military policy. However, he argued that our government was creating world-wide suspicion by having no definite policy on many basic issues, and by carrying on such affairs as the Bikini tests.

7 On the U.S. tradition consult Almond, Gabriel A., The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1950.Google Scholar