The Sun is probably the worst Newspaper in the UK, not only are their stories untrue, but just idiotically blown out of proporition. The News holds a lot of responsibility because it claims to factual and hence people will believe what they see, read and hear on the news. But actually its made to sell, its a product and hey, articles on how horrible dangerous MRSA allegedly is can sell a newspaper.
We have newspapers that sell on paranoia, the Daily Mail is another, I usd this example before in another discussion, but they were the ones claiming Google can now spy on us and Google street view is suddenly a great tool for stalkers, even though it's about as useful to a stalker as an atlas. The article was full of idiocy and paranoia, however, people are gonna believe that BS.
Also, they have a knack for hurting people's reputation, I remember when suspects for the London bombing were caught The Sun's headline was, "GOT THE BASTARDS" claiming we had the bombers, at the time I remember thinking, "what if it turns out they were actually innoncent? As they're just suspects after all". IIRC luckily they were guilty, but that doesn't change because they didn't know as no descision had been made as to whether or not they were guilty at the time.
The New Media can be very political too and I am often worried about how they affect the votes through manipulation of the facts. Because they will do anything to make their favoured party/politicians look good and their opposition look bad and given we know certain sources of news, particularly tabloids are just sensationalist and not completely straight or honest about the facts, I NEVER use the political points raised in the news to base my opinions and any political figure. A clever technique is to create the illusion that they're balanced so the audience thinks they're getting both sides of the story.
I find journalists can be just as corrupt as politicians, but at the end of the day the commercialised media is about making money not offering a public service. So I don't trust everything I read or hear, unless I can actually find reliable information.
