I personally feel that it does, and I seek to attain a better insight. My reason for believing it does is that the newspapers all write in a bias, rather than objective way, about news and events. I don’t know if its done in such a way to appeal to their target market (their customers), or whether the papers are written in such a way to achieve a higher purpose, or both. In the UK, our new “coalition government” is still in its teething stages but it seems like the newspapers are reflective of what this new government stands for. All of a sudden, there is this “uproar” about the numbers on welfare / benefits. I’ve read a few newspapers today and they all attack people in benefits at some point, and some of them make it their main story. I believe this is to soften the blow when our so-called coalition government phases out the benefits system. After all, there has never been such focus placed on the numbers on benefits in previous years. It would seem like the media can be used as a political tool for social reform. I’ll tell you a secret, I live in Northern Ireland. And ever since the leaders of the two contesting groups agreed to try to reach some sort of an agreement, the news stations and papers have flamed any action taken by either side, and crime has dropped substantially. Such action was widely accepted as part of our heritage, culture and lives, even though the majority detested it; and this has changed thanks in part by the media. The wasting young men in our society used to commit crimes because it was the “cool to be bad”, but now that we’ve had a major paradigm shift such crimes aren’t as common as no one wants to be hated by the masses. And as for the papers, why do they broadly state that all claimants are “Workshy” and never express that there are individuals out there who need such a system to survive?