role of the media in breaking-up the communist system

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1.3, Estonian Business School (-), course: Political Reforms in East and Central Europe, language: English, abstract: "e;A pen can be more powerful than a sword!"e;. This simple phrase shows thecapacity of media. As long as we can think about the meaning of media it wasused by political systems to support their power. Media can be used to give thepeople a special way of thinking, but it can also be a free tool to support a freethinking about affairs. With modern technology in the beginning of the 20thcentury people were confronted with mass media for the first time. The states inthe second World War used the media to spread information it did not matter ifthe information were wrong or false as long it secured the support of thepopulation: Propaganda was born. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,also discovered the power of the media. He tried to revamp the Soviet Union byallowing the media a greater range of freedoms under his policy of glasnost. Butas he and the world soon discovered, the power of accurate information deliveredin a timely fashion to those who needed it soon overwhelmed the barriers he hadhoped to maintain. The destruction of communism and of the Soviet empire soonfollowed.