Does the media (at large) reflect or dictate public opinion?

[DanaC]

I would say in the UK there is a fairly strong tradition of good journalism particularly on the BBC and in one or two of the national papers ( The Guardian, The Observer, The Mirror)

We have two very strong nightly news programmes ( Newsnight on th bbc and Channel 4 News on independant tv) which regularly hold the government of the day to account.

Mostly I think they do a damn good job of bringing the world's events to my door.

Investigative journalism is alive and well in the UK as evidenced recently by two stories which spring to mind for me. One was the undercover opoeration carried out by the Mirror newspaper in which a journalist posed as a recruit and was taken on to work for a "reception centre" in which asylum seekers were being held until their cases had bene heard. .....Thanks to this journalist's excellent reportage the nation was made aware of the appalling mistreatment of some of society's most vulnerable and damaged people ( refugees)

The other story which springs to mind is the undercover operation by a bbc journalist who got into the police training academy and secretly filmed his fellow recruits ( and officers) engaging in appalling levels of racism. Some of the stories these people told whilst they thought the camera no camera was present were seriously disturbing and have opend a lot of people's eyes to the danger of racist policing.

On the flip side to this....we have some of the less dependable types of journalism. The shock and titilate brand of story telling which doesnt check the facts and peddles fear. Some of the less pleasant tabloids tend to engage in this and the ITV news leaves a lot to be desired.