>John;
>
>What I enjoy about our media is that they create what is important and give it what emphasis they think it demands. The media drives or attempts to create paranoia in the population.
>
>One report I observed on television last week about the West Nile Virus was that last year two thirds of all horses in the Mid Western part of the United States died of that illness. Nowhere else have I been able to find such numbers. The media is despicable in is ability to educate the masses and keep us informed.

Since they are driven by ratings, they have a definite conflict of interest between objective reporting and sensationalism in order to grab better ratings. Keeping personal agendas [e.g., political bias] in check is also a perceived, if not real, problem.