So... were we just going to avoid this one forever?

[DanaC]

One of my main gripes with government today is that they are so sadly dependent on the media. If that had been the case at the start of the last century I doubt women would ever have got the vote (1918)

Actually, the print media played a huge role in politics throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century and on through the nineteenth. Political careers were made and destroyed in newspapers, though not as prolifically as now:P For example, in the 1760s a press war forced the Earl of Bute (the PM at the time) into the political wilderness and helped secure fame and power for one of his main critics, the radical politician John Wilkes. What gives the incident a seriously modern flavour though, is Bute's attempts to influence the public mood by rigging press coverage, hiring a gang of journalists to sing his administrations praises......the modern age didn't invent spin doctors:P Government secret service accounts from the eighteenth century show that thousands of pounds were spent during the early part of the 1780s in an attempt to use the growing medium of popular politics. But....the press and the public have always been difficult to control and it really wasn't any clearer back then, than it is now, who was wagging who

As to the tabloids.....if you have time or inclination check out the tabloid press of the nineteenth century, very Murdoch!....then take a quick peek at the middle-class fayre and you'll see a direct equivalent to today's Daily Mail nastiness and fear mongering (lots of stuff about the general degeneration of morals and health of the working classes the so called 'efficiency debate' and the loosening of society's control over girls and women).