News and Media

The means of producing and disseminating news, information, and entertainment to a universal audience, typically through the press, magazines, cinema, radio and television, and even paperback publishing and pornography. Developing historically with industrialization and urbanization, the mass media have come to play an influential role in every nation's economic, political, and cultural life. The mass media have been hailed at times as bulwarks of democracy and key contributors to social cohesion and well-being, and at other times reviled as agents of repression, or as promoting anti-social behaviour and perverting cultural standards. In countries with authoritarian or totalitarian governments, government ownership or control directly affect the mass media. Most media organizations are operated commercially, though some are state-owned or, like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), public corporations. Mergers and acquisitions, as well as the integration of production, distribution, and equipment supply, have produced media empires operating on a multinational or indeed worldwide basis.