This thesis provides an insight into the development of rhetoric with an emphasis on that political dimension during the twentieth century, during which technological development enabled expansion of the media. The aim of the thesis was to display the influence of new electronic media on the manner of speaking skills and vice versa, i.e. how speakers recognized the power of the new media and adapted it to their positive and negative skills, while pointing out the influence they achieved and realized during their public appearances. The first part of the thesis shows the historical development of rhetoric as an art mastered by great philosophers and political speakers of Classical antiquity in order to explain the paradigm of public communication. The thesis displays the approach of speakers from the 20th century to the media, as well as changes that the appearance of electronic media required of the speaker. An example is given in the form of well-known statesmen and political activists, whose speaking abilities evolved with the revolutionary development of radio and television, and public performances took on quite different features. The closing part follows the development of speakers, as well as postulates which, with the development and emergence of a powerful tool such as the media, changed their value, bringing into question the credibility of the speaker and the spoken word; i.e., positions shifted, and what is being spoken became minor and who is speaking and in what manner became - primary.