Recently there has been an increase in influence of mass media on publics opinions and ideas, I am totally in agreement with this point of view.
Mass media has been influencing public opinions and ideas from a very early years and there have been historic evidence that proves that mass media have influenced people more in shaping their opinions and ideas. During the period of world war 1 and world war 2 many leaders used mass media in order to influence the general public to gain their trust, also public which were consuming daily news through such mass media were easily mislead to support the leaders which were totally having wrong motives.
Moreover, public under the impression of such mass media tend to oversee the good leaders who were against the war and who were supporting peace and welfare for everyone belonging to a country. It has been observed from a research conducted by the Yales University in California that a group of people having some opinion about an issue, changed their opinion and ideas after reading article on that issue which had different point of view, as per the research around 80% people changed their initial idea and opinion thus proving the influence of mass media on their original decisions and ideas.
Overall, I feel that mass media have a great influence over general public and are responsible to change the opinion of public and thus mass media should carefully investigate any issues before publishing any news about it in general public.