16) The Discovery of the Germ, by John Waller
About the period between 1880 and 1900 in which it became generally accepted that germs were responsible for disease. Competently done but not very exciting.
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I think the day you look forward to in your first para is coming, but not here yet. The mass media surely remain the key source of information for the vast majority, at least for now.
I don’t know a lot about Caroline of Brunswick, except that she was systematically attacked and victimised by her ex-husband and by the British state. I guess there’s a case that Cruickshank’s cartoons are such wonderful pieces of art that they deserve special consideration, but I’m not going to make it.
I’m not very interested in the idea that the taste of the general public should be determinative of this issue. Legislation is done by legislators, not by referendum, still less by divining theoretical referendum results from the newspaper-buying public’s purchasing choices.
Journalists do of course function as you describe, but they also have a mind to what the law states about what they can publish. It’s not a case of a completely free press versus a completely controlled press, it’s a question of where the law puts the balance, and at present that seems to me to be in the wrong place.