The Power of Knowledge

"'Knowledge is Power,' may be read not simply as an endorsement of knowledge but also as a warning of its perils.":Paul Starr, Introduction, Creation of the Media, p.8

Many governments have a strong grip upon the media in order to control the spread of ideas. Starr analyzes that certain societies limit the spread of ideas, in order to dumb down their populous so they are more easily controlled.
Governments that choose to rule by an iron fist, fear the press for it's power to gain momentum and cause change. Countries such as Cuba, China and the former Soviet Union all limited their media and forbade the spread of information that they deem damaging.
But with the rise of the internet, it is becoming harder for governments to control what information their citizens are reading. China, for instance, has blocked its people from using the popular search engine Google , for fear that they might stumble across something their government lied to them about. For the most part the Chinese Google is similar to it's English counterpart, however if a Chinese citizen types "democracy" into the search engine, red flags go up.
Governments that control the media are a filter that screens information and allows only suitable material to be distributed among the mass. This denial of information keeps the citizens in the dark and keeps the government one step ahead of any revolutionaries.