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The Importance Of The Press Essays

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The Importance of the Press

The newspaper is a powerful medium. It is powerful because it has the ability to influence the way that people view the world, as well as their opinion of what they see. In peaceful times (or in times of oppression, for sometimes they can appear to be happening at the same moment) the press is usually one of the instruments used by the state in order to maintain the status quo. However, during times of political unrest it is often the press who becomes the major antagonist in the fight against the government.
Why is this so? Why does the press get so deeply involved in, not just the reporting of, but the instigating and propagating of political …show more content…

Other more extreme forms of socialism are fascism and authoritarianism. These ideologies more closely resemble the monarchies that ruled much of Europe and the new world, before the great revolutions. Monarchism is an ideology that believes in the absolute rule of a "royal" family. The king and/or queen have the power to make decisions without question from anyone. The series of revolutions which included the English Reformation, the American and French
Revolutions, and to a lesser extent the revolts in Upper and Lower Canada, were all confrontations over who should hold political ascendancy. Moreover, they were clashes of ideology, between monarchism and liberalism.
Liberalism was developed during the Enlightenment. This was a period of time when writers, scientists, and philosophers began to openly question certain aspects of society and the role that they should or should not play. Attacked were the kings and queens, the clergy and feudalist system as a whole. The ideas of this time formed the basis of revolutionary thought. The goal of the revolutionaries was to build a new society based on liberal values of the
Enlightenment. "Liberal politicians in Europe wanted to establish a framework of legal equality, religious toleration and freedom of the press."2 It was the deprivation of these principles, by the monarchical leaders, which led to

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