What is the role of media?

Don't get me started!  The media's role today, as it has been for at least the past 50 years, is to manipulate, control, and frighten the people.  Certainly not very good values in my opinion.  It manipulates people into buying products they do not need (or even necessarily want), such as unhealthy foods and taking unnecessary and more often than not, harmful pharmaceuticals..  It instills fear by only relaying negative pictures of the world and events going on around us.  Of course I am talking mainly about the big guns--and then mostly television stations and large newspapers, as opposed to specialty magazines, cable, adn the like.  Yes, the media should portray the news, but in a truthful way. 

My dad was a journalist and I always remember a story he told me about one time when he wrote an article for  a newspaper in which he had gone to a lecture on the customs of a certain African tribe.  He said it was extremely interesting but when he went to work the next day, the headline read something like "Sex rituals of savages."  Can you believe it!  My dad was furious and went to the editor who told him that they were in business to sell newspapers!  In other words, whatever it took, that's what they printed.  And this was sometime in the late 30's or early '40's! 

Things haven't progressed much since then.  Ever since I heard that story, I have mistrusted all major media forms.   Now the media CAN BE a very powerful tool if used to educate and inform people in a positive way.  Although this is changing very slowly in the mainstream media, there are some smaller magazines, and independent networks that are bringing messages of hope, spirituality, and healthy living.  So I guess there is hope.