"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, aware of this and with merchant habits, satisfies their requests." – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891. The above quote summarizes the past and present influence of the media on human societies. Human beings have a tendency to seek justifications for their ridiculous actions, whether for the benefit of a group, to spread their ideology, or out of pure greed. In creating these justifications, some form of media must be used for it to take hold of a particular society. The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century, acting as a preamble, led from one event to another such as the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. This last conflict was the epitome of deplorable misery and death, all fueled by what was widespread in manuscripts and printed books. My thesis is that various media, especially newspapers, have driven and will continue to drive political conflict and misery. Additionally, I will argue with evidence dating back to the nineteenth century, such as a brief description of the rise of the media in the United States in the 1860s, Henry Morgan Stanley's Congo experience, and culminating in the start of the Spanish-American War at the end of that century. Although the media had no spectacular influence aside from the Reformation, the American and French Revolutions (particularly in the form of pamphlets to spread ideals), were galvanized in the nineteenth century by improvements in technology. These improvements, introduced by the industrial revolution, exploited the ability of printing presses to geometrically multiply their production. With... half the paper... ions, thanks to technological improvements, spread them everywhere without taking into account the consequences. These media, by exploiting the human appetite for new information and venturing into uncharted territory, unintentionally created a new world in which lives were drastically changed forever. Works Cited Berenson, Edward. Heroes of Empire: five charismatic men and the conquest of Africa. Berkeley: University of California, 2011. Print.Key, Wilson Bryan. The era of manipulation: the fraud in trust, the sin in sincerity. New York: H. Holt, 1989. Print.Secunda, Eugene and Terence P. Moran. Selling War to America: From the Spanish-American War to the Global War on Terrorism. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007. Print.Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865-1878. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994. Print.