Mass media opinions are just that, opinions. It's harder to recognise that when one is quite young, but once the whole wash, spin ,repeat cycle has happened in front of your eyes a few times, one would have to be very hard of understanding to accept things as gospel as they are presented on the 6 o'clock news without reading between the lines and forming equally plausible explanations, all factors including money, politics, hidden (or rather semi-hidden) agendas etc taken into account. An excellent book was written in the 1920's by the founder of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, simply titled Propaganda. It should be around on the net as a free download. It simply points out that humans are hierarchical in nature, there are relatively few opinion makers and that the vast majority of people look to them to form their opinions. Influence the few and you influence the many. Easy peasy.
