Responisibilities of the Mass Media
Basic funtions of mass media include:     Entertainment is a viable function of media, not intrinsically good or bad. Problems arise when mass media, media moderators, or mass audiences disagree on the limits of what is and is not moral entertainment. Even the question of whether entertainment should have anything to do with morals comes into play.

    For the most part, media moderators like the Federal Communications Commission or Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers have learned to consort with mass media and come to a 'happy medium' between completely immoral and over-censored extremes. After all, when the industry does not listen at least in part to the demands of its audiences, through ratings, boycotts, etc. the media itself can suffer.

    Informing also presents special problems. The function of informing the public is quite invaluable, and it is even quite often the mark of an educated person to be well-informed on current issues. It is arguably very important to understand your world and the people in it, and informing the public on these matters is one of the nobler activities of mass media.

    But how far is too far? Should informing the public about a war in another country include photographs of dead people? One group of people may favor such images, arguing that truth may be blunt, but it is the media's duty to be utterly honest. Others might counter that honesty is possible without  disrespecting the deceased in question and subsequently bringing further pain to his or her loved ones.

    Influencing is an integral part of mass media. Since media are merely groups of imperfect people presenting information and/or entertainment, one can naturally expect a certain degree of bias, often referred to as slant. Any time a story or other bit of entertainment is presented to the public, certain facts are capitalized upon, deleted, embellished or blatantly invented to evoke a certain response from an audience. It is utterly impossible to present a purely unbiased piece of work to the public because there is no such thing as a purely unbiased human being.

    So while a little slant is unavoidable, some media have a tendency toward lying, cheating and other immoral forms of behavior to present a story. Some believe that as long as the end result is not terrible, the means do not matter. Others believe that it is the media's responsibility to try and remain as objective as possible at all times to allow an audience to make its own judgments.

    Media is the greatest and most efficient way of linking a society together. It transmits culture to large numbers of people at the same time, giving a sense of cultural unity and identity. Without the binding power of media, Coca Cola and McDonald's would not be universally recognized symbols of American culture. Television is especially good at transmitting a common identity to a nation or many nations, since it is more widely and vigorously consumed than other forms of modern media.

 
The Effects of Mass Media

    Some scholars describe the effects of mass media like the effect of dropping a pebble into a still pool of water. It begins in the center with the media communicators themselves, moving out in larger and larger rings through laws and codes, gatekeepers (such as a general editor of a newspaper), the actual media, media regulators, filters, the audiences and then moving on to have effects on society. The amount of feedback from the public and the extent to while media amplify, hype and distort stories determines the speed with which these 'ripples' move and the potency of their effect on society.

  
Link here for information on different ideas of media morality.

Link here for information on the public opinion of media morality.

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