ABSTRACT
By focusing on the uses of historically non-mainstream media by the Right in their reaction against science-based professional journalism at the time, this chapter assesses the lasting effects of that monumental fight for the control of American culture. In the post-war period, Riley's Biblical literalism and Walter Lippmann's science-based approach to journalism as the basis of democracy were symptoms of the tenuous nature of the first culture war. In making the case for a reformed practice of journalism, Lippmann pointedly used ecclesiastical language to describe the way that science-based journalism was already displacing religion as the engine of American democracy. The chapter discusses that, Lippmann's science-based journalism is not a straw man, but reflects an important political theory that has developed in an epic century-long competition with conservatism to define the ideological basis of post-war American society to date. In that sense, Lippmann did not think and write in a historical vacuum. Rather, he saw conservatives as a cultural enemy.
