ABSTRACT
It is in democracies that the mass media play the most central role because where expression of views is not controlled it follows that many will wish to express them. In Britain, regular newspapers appeared in the eighteenth century and then in the late nineteenth century cheap daily papers arrived. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's relaxed 'fireside chats' for the first time brought the voice of his office into every living room in the country. But even he could not compete with Winston Churchill's stirring wartime broadcasts. The famous Nixon-Kennedy debates took place in 1960 but it was not until 2010 that Britain followed suit. Many politicians complain that the media are 'biased' against them. Harold Wilson used to claim that while the print press was dominated by Tory-supporting papers, television was Labour's medium. Less subject to the law and regulation are called 'new' media which have burgeoned astonishingly over the past two decades.
