"The media" is all the TV networks, magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and major websites that communicate information to a large number of people in a country. When you talk about "the media", you're usually talking about the mainstream media, which is media that most people know about and pay attention to.

Although it's made up of lots of different parts, we consider "the media" to be one single thing. That's why we use "the" in front of it.

If you're not talking about mainstream media, you don't have to use "the" in front of "media". Some other types of media include:

• local media
• print media
• liberal media (media by and for people who have liberal political views)
• conservative media
• new media (web sites, web videos, etc.)
• old media (media that's not on the Internet)