“Some Cantankerous Drift of History”: Walter Lippmann, James Reston, and the Goldwater Presidential Campaign

Senator Barry Goldwater and his supporters held the mainstream media partially responsible for his landslide loss to President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and directed much of their criticism at political columnists. This analysis of the work of two prominent columnists, Walter Lippmann and James Reston, considered not only criticism leveled at news content about Goldwater’s campaign but also efforts by “conservative media activists” to foster distrust of mainstream media. It concludes that despite informed opinions and accurate predictions offered by these columnists about Goldwater throughout the 1964 campaign, their work fed the idea of liberal media bias and contributed to the successful effort of the conservative movement to transform US political culture.