To what extent do the best selling UK newspapers cover stories related to seious issues? To what extent would you think that it is their role to do so? In your opinion do the tabloid media and 'Low budget entertainment' (reality shows, soaps) have too much power and influence in this country?

The media most probably has the biggest influence on people in this country. Most of what people talk about, and often believe is from the media. It is the media that is blamed for things like girls wanting to be size zero and boyswanting certain video games. I believe that to a certain extent this is true as people read newspapers and magazines and read in them what they should be doing and how they should look, however, I rarely see any serious issues raised in these sources and this is what is, in many ways, worrying.

I don't often read newspapers, particularly not broadsheets, and looking at the information given on the blog prompt, neither do many other people, as there is only one broadsheet in the six most popular newspapers. This could be for many reasons, but I believe that it is for the reason that tabloids are easy to read, and written in a fairly short and simple way. Therefore people buy these to catch up on the news. Take the Sun for example, the most popular newspaper and the most well known tabloid, I have never read a story in the Sun about Climate Change or any such issue, particularly never as a cover story. The cover stories of the Sun are Usually the X factor results, new celebrity romance, or even the breakdown of celebrity relationships. This is because it is what many people want to read about, however these are not serious or even important issues of the world, and it is not keeping people informed on what is happening.

I am not a great reader of broadsheets or newspapers like the Daily Mail so can see why people may not enjoy reading them. The reason I mentioned the Daily Mail is because I see it as a completely different paper to the Sun, and although it is a tabloid, from what I have seen, it does have articles about reality TV and such, but it also raises some other issues, one of which being politics, which is an important issue in many peoples eyes. Some headlines on the Daily Mails website include 'Neighbours' fury as BT chairman is only person in village to get high speed broadband' and 'Policde set search to Tiger Woods' Mansion and seize his Medical Files after he misses third interview' and 'Britain pledges 500 extra troops for Afghanistan as Obama prepares 30000-strong surge'. This shows a variety in the news that they put forward, and therefore is more informative, and possibly in many way smore reliable than the Sun.

The Daily Telegraph is the only broadsheet in the top six papers according to the information given on the blog prompt, therefore I have looked into the headlines to see what issues are raised in this paper and how informative it could be about serious issues in the world today.The outcome I found was different to the tabloids, to begin with it was much more to do with politics than celebrities, and although on the website there was a section on celebrity news, there wasn't anything on the cover stories, showing that celebrities aren't the most important feature of this newspaper. There was also a section on the Earth, and the majority of this section was based on articles to do with climate change. I therefore believe that the Daily Telegraph does include serious issues in its news, however that doesnt necessarily mean that there is enough of this information. I have found that broadsheets are much more related to serious issues than tabloids are. It is a shame in my opinion that broadsheets aren't read enough by people as they could change many views and even educate people in some issues that are raised. I am the first to admit that I am one of those people who don't read broadsheets, and maybe should, but for me this is not necessarily because of the differnece in information given, but more to do with the fact that they are not as easy to read as the tabloids are.

As a result I do not believe that the UKs top selling newspapers relate enough to serious issues, unless you are someone who believes that serious issues include the winner of the X factor. I believe that tabloids should include at least a few more articles on serious issues such as climate change, new laws and legislations, wars and politics.

I believe that it is the responsibility of the media, particularly the newspapers to cover stories related to serious issues because of the fact that they are so influential over the public and can make a huge difference in what people believe and how they act, as we have found in relation to other media stories and actions. Due to the fact that the tabloids are the most popular newspapers, I believe that this should put them under more pressure to increase the serious information that they include as well as keeping the stories that people enjoy reading and this would increase the chance of people reading about the more important issues and therefore there would be more people becoming educated in these issues and to have knowledge to form opinions on these issues and possibly make some changes if they are or will affect these individuals in any way.

Tabloid media does have too much power and influence over this country at the moment, but they could use this to their advantage and it is possible to make the right changes as they could make the important issues into more interesting articles and improve the influence that they have over people. However, personally I believe that it is the 'low budget media' such as reality TV shows and soaps that have far too much influence. This is because in my opinion, they are interesting to watch, but they do not teach any lessons about the realities of the world. People begin to believe that soaps and celebrities are what are important because that is all that they see and read about, but they are missing out on the important issues. The most watched TV is not documentaries on what IS important and what is happening in the world, but soaps and reality TV, which shows just how much influence they have over people. However much this may be my opinion, I know that it is unlikely to ever change as it is what makes peope a lot of money and what people are interested in, but I do believe that people should make more of an effort to show an interest in world issues and important ones at that.