Research- We media and its contents

Throughout the duration of my holiday I had to independently find information on the locally sourced media whether through social media, newspapers, other internet sources or verbally through conversation or gossip then rate them on their reliability and their origins and whether it is dependable or plausible if not made up by “trolls”. Most sources of intelligence of current affairs are skewed by personal opinion as the sharing of media becomes more democratic, this is called “we media” or "new media" as anyone is now able to post their own stories and allowed to express their opinion this means the quality credibility and reliability of said information can be uncertain, leading to virtually all news to be distrusted or in some cases not at all, such as believed in the eyes of the consume and the consumer can also be a producer leading to Tapscott and Williams theory of "Prosumers" such as citizen journalists. This can be seen in current daily events that go fairly unnoticed in the democratic sense such as YouTube which allows the free exchange of ideas news thoughts and entertainment and poll shows like most recognised the x-factor where the audience themselves decide the round winners.

 However there are major issues as people who have greater influence over the media such as Rupert Murdock owner of "Sky", "The Sun", "The Times" and finally the "Press Association" who is causing the network to, in a sense become less democratic as he control's a large majority of media as a "Big media" conglomerate . He has openly stated he can decide elections due to the fact that his opinion can be used to shape stories to have views that lean towards his ideals, his conglomerates subsidiaries would have no say in the matter but to print or display it almost giving his power a aerie propaganda feel. For example political views or opinion on migrants. This would be posted in an array of media outlets which is a rather scary and controversial though to believe that no one man has so much power and influence over peoples decisions. Even though our current free flow of ideas in our more democratic media system allows the expression of the opinions in the populous, it can be untrustworthy or purely subjective and allow people such as Murdock to gain more influence than others. By having the UK's BBC even though part of the "big media" category is a supposedly political and unbiased stature on opinions the BBC allows more reliable news feed than the newspaper or internet by having no connection or obligations to outside or opposing parties. The only politicians to openly criticise Murdock was Ed Miliband, and virtually all media shows how terrible he is so the question is who should we really believe?

I found four main pieces of info from 3 different sources this listed as first of all That a blue whale was spotted in the south coast of the UK, and came across this information when told by a friend, although the source of the information isn't necessarily a solid piece of evidence to its truth as i don't know where they acquired it from. There is very little reason for a story such as this to be fiction and no direct profits or effects to be made by even altering the story and cannot be subjective. However stories such as "man dies after cops refuse lift" is, this is because of the current Zeitgeist of hate for the police force this story could easily be manufactured or simply warped to portrait negative views, as its origin is from a local newspaper there is a chance its fabricated with no eye witnesses or statements, and if so it's had to identify if what they state is the truth. So for stories such as this that are hard for the public to believe. newspaper companies above all other media conventions seem to be battle, their opinions especially political with most having a very open generalised low brow highbrow views these would include guardian, the Sun or the Daily mail, and the paper considered for proletariat consumers stereotypically supporting the left wing parties such as labour wile vice versa bourgeois consumers papers such as the independent are stereotypically aimed at the right wing conservative parties. However currently the media of print papers are becoming obsolete some tabloid news companies even going entirely online due to the decreasing number of consumers.