Did you hear that two hunters in Georgia found Big Foot? Of course, the reason the press hasn't "covered" this story is because it is totally untrue. It is an urban legend and over the years several people have claimed to have found Big Foot. Unfortunately, people believe this crazy stuff because they want to believe it. Everyday journalists have to sort through bogus stories such as this one, to uncover factual stories.
In this particular passage, I believe Lippman was trying to convey that, the job of a journalist remains a difficult task, due to the influx of information one has to sort through to uncover the “facts” and report it to the public in timely fashion.
Lippman states, “The task of selecting and ordering the news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy”, but is he really suggesting journalist are priests? Or is he more or less suggesting that in order for a journalist to spend countless hours rummaging through, organizing and uncovering facts, he or she must depict priest like or saintly characteristics.
I do believe that at the time Lippman wrote this particular passage he was citing an external principle concerning the role of Journalism. Journalists have always had the job of sorting through, “Fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears “, in order to uncover some sort of truth and try to reiterate it back to the public without bias. Now with all the technological advances and excess of information provided by the internet Lippman’s perspective on journalism remains timeless.
