The chapter traces the evolution of the public sphere in the US and asks about its relationship to liberalism. Compared to European countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the US developed a robust and open public sphere, based on “constitutive choices” such as subsidies for newspaper distribution. The chapter also analyzes the rise of professional journalism and its complicated relation to the liberal script, before arguing that recent pathologies in US journalism and the public sphere are largely due to regulatory choices, not technological innovations such as social media. The chapter also claims that practices of professional journalism have been weaponized against liberalism (and democracy) in recent years.