ABSTRACT
There is considerable contemporary concern in Britain about the state of the newspaper press. The most common charge is that a great part of the press has effectively severed its links with political life. The populist position argues that the readers are not passive dupes: they have the opportunity to purchase quality titles but make an active choice to buy the popular press. The content of the popular press can only be explained by the dual action of the economics of the market and the nature of mass taste. The evidence of opinion and research appears to be that the mass circulation press in a bourgeois democracy has only partially fulfilled the proclaimed aims of the press as an element of political life. The fact that the market conditions and political realities of bourgeois democracy increasingly tend to persuade people to opt out of effective participation in the public sphere is further illuminated by the internationalization of the press.
