A hundred years ago, Walter Lippmann, one of the great analysts of democratic life, wrote that the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism. Press barons, Lippmann feared, were so powerful that government based on the consent of the governed was under threat if unregulated media owners could manufacture consent. If the facts were not being made available to the public, how could the public make proper democratic choices? Today, those words ring as true as they ever did. In place of press barons like William Randolph Hearst are corporations that curry favour with an administration that has no compunction about making regulatory decisions based on who the President thinks are his friends. TV networks remove comedians who offend the President for fear of retribution. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire owner of the Washington Post, a newspaper that for a while adopted the slogan “democracy dies in darkness”, prevented the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris and subsequently announced that the opinions page would henceforth only carry pieces that supported free markets and personal liberties. And in an age when most people get their news in two-second bites from social media, how can the governed give meaningful consent?

These are of course age-old questions about democracy: what does government of the people, by the people look like? How do we have a functioning democracy if we agree on a common set of facts – and how can journalists do their work if people don’t believe they’re pursuing the truth?

Each generation wrestles with these kinds of questions in new ways, not least in the face of new media technology—whether the spread of the millionaire-owned popular press in the early twentieth century, the rise of radio or cable TV or the internet.

In this episode, we draw on Walter Lippmann’s 20th-century warnings about the vulnerability of democracy to propaganda, misinformation, and public disengagement, to assess the challenges facing journalism in 2025.

Adam Smith speaks to Marty Baron, former Washington Post executive editor between 2013 and 2021 and to Dr Tom Arnold Forster, author of Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography, published by Princeton University Press.

The Last Best Hope? is a podcast of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. For details of our programming go to rai.ox.ac.uk

Producer: Emily Williams. Presenter: Adam Smith

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been almost a year since The Last Best Hope aired, and in that time, America has changed dramatically. So in the new series, we’ll be attempting to put Trump’s foreign policy in a historical context, we’ll be discussing the enduring myth of the frontier, and asking how history will judge Joe Biden. And in a special two-part documentary, we’ll return to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War, and ask what significance it still has at another moment of national crisis.

“Adam Smith is one of the UK’s foremost historians of America, and communicates his expertise with zest, wit and unforced passion. The Last Best Hope? brings him together with fellow scholars to provide a unique insight we can’t do without.”

Phil Tinline, BBC radio documentary-maker and author

"The Last Best Hope is an absolutely brilliant podcast. Thoughtful, clever, engaging and accessible, Adam Smith always gets the best out of his guests, and I’ve learned an enormous amount from every episode. I love it."

Dominic Sandbrook, Historian and co-host of The Rest is History

“The must-listen US podcast”

Nick Bryant, former BBC Correspondent in New York

The Last Best Hope is a podcast produced by the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. The presenter is Adam Smith, Orsborn Professor of US Politics and Political History, and the Producer is Emily Williams.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special episode of The Last Best Hope, we bring you a recording of a live event at the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford on Thursday, November 7. Adam Smith and guests discussed why the election turned out the way it did.

The panellists are:

Jason Casellas ABC News election decision desk. Jason Casellas is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. He is an expert in Latino politics and has published widely on state and local politics.

Clare Malone New Yorker staff writer. Clare Malone reports on politics, media, and journalism for the New Yorker. She previously covered both the 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns as a senior political writer for FiveThirtyEight.

Mike Murphy Republican political strategist and media consultant. Mike Murphy has worked on the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush and John McCain. He also co-hosts the popular politics podcast Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod.

Kimberley Johnson John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government. Kimberley Johnson is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and an expert on racial and ethnic, and suburban and urban politics.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.