Abstract:

John Dewey and Walter Lippmann:
A Subversion of the Theory of Press Freedom(School of FilmTelevision Arts and Technologies, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200072, China)Abstract： The theory of press freedom is a guidance theory of mass media, which held a leading position in western countries from the midseventeenth century to the midtwentieth century. Absorbing the theoretical essence of several western ideologists in the seventeenth century, it prepared the public for developing a free, independent system of mass media under the condition of capitalism. But, as times went, things were different. Up to the fifties of the 20th century, the monopoly reality of the western mass media and the overflowing of emotional news reports made untimed the theory of press freedom. Therefore, it was inevitably replaced by the theory of social responsibility initiated by Commission on Freedom of the Press in 1947. During that time, John Dewey, an American philosopher of pragmatism, and Walter Lippmann, an American theoretician of journalism and communication, have a powerful, theoretical criticism of the premise and contents of the theory of press freedom, which served as a subversion of the predominant western theory of mass media and made good bedding for the replacement of the theory of press freedom with the theory of social responsibility.
 

Key words: the theory of press freedom, John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, theoretical criticism