A Test of the News

"...Enlighten me now, o Muses, Tenants of Olympian homes,

For you are goddesses, inside on everything, know everything.

But we mortals hear only the news, and know nothing at all...."

--The Iliad, Book II 484-486



A Test of the News, published as a supplement to The New Republic in 1920, was a study by the journalists Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz into the press coverage by the New York Times of the Bolshevik revolution. They found many inaccuracies and distortions in the Times' coverage and stated that "the news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see." In addition, they established that the Times reported ninety-one occasions that the revolutionary regime was near collapse. This study supported Lippmann's belief that "the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism." Even though his statement applied to the 1920s, the same could be said in 2019 where the reliability of mainstream news and the prevalence of "fake news" is at the forefront of many discussions.

A Test of the News is a must-read for journalists, historians, and all who are interested in the importance of the media and current affairs.