This session will consider the treatment of a series of geo-political issues ranging from TV coverage of the Vietnam War to the role of social media in the Arab Spring and the war in Ukraine.  The rise of democracy in western societies was always dependent on the growing circulation and accessibility of newsprint and a little later cinema (newsreels), radio and television broadcasting; there could never have been mass politics without the mass media. We shall debate how the free exchange of information and ideas was compromised by censorship and distorted by propaganda.