Do the best selling newspapers cover serious issues? Is it their role to do so? do they and low budget TV have to much influence and power?

Well looking at the front pages it’s pretty mixed I feel. I thought I would look at their front pages because I felt that the front page would give a good idea as to what sort of 'stories' they are most likely to write about (human interest or current affairs) [1]. 3 of the 6 out of the list you gave us (#2, #3, #4) had at least one current affairs story but only the Telegraph was dominated by current affairs, the other 5 papers for that matter all had something... that’s best described as being not very serious (Daily Star home page for example [2]). The reason is down to target audience, tabloids target audience tends to be younger adults who are more interested in human interest stories (like celebrities etc.) and so they won’t show serious issues and lose their readers, it just happens that out of the best selling newspapers, 5 of them are tabloids.
As a whole, it is Deffinatly the role of the newspapers for providing us with news about serious issues because they are our first source of information next to the internet, and even on the internet, the newspapers website would be a major source of information! The main purpose of the newspapers is to be a source of information for the public otherwise they would not have been created. I think because of the number of newspapers though, they can report news on a wider range of topics while still serving their original purpose, so to answer the question I think they have a major role, but are large enough as a media, to explore other news types without reducing the amount of serious issues that come up in the newspapers
I think that other people think that the tabloid media and 'low budget entertainment' have too much influence but in reality, they don’t. I can't say for everyone in the UK who watches the programs that made it on the top 10 list, but I don't think they take them very seriously when it comes to current affairs, or of news of any kind for that matter. Their large success only means that people like watching them doesn’t mean they watch them to be educated on current matters, it’s purely for entertainment and that’s all they use it for. The tabloids have slightly more say on the matter though. Because they are our source of information then people are willing to accept what they show and their increasing success over broadsheets and other current affairs papers shows that they have a large audience to influence. The tabloids probably do have too much influence over people because they do talk about politics in a very biased way which can sway people’s minds about people before they know both sides of the argument. So in short, TV programs like low budget entertainment will have next to no effect on people but tabloids are a whole different issue and their ever increasing success means their audience and therefore their influence is growing.

1) Sky News Front Page Picture Gallery: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Newspaper-Front-Pages-On-Tuesday-December-8-2009/Media-Gallery/200912115495504?lpos=UK_News_News_in_Picture_UK_News_Region_0&lid=GALLERY_15495504_Newspaper_Front_Pages_On_Tuesday%2C_December_8%2C_2009_

2) Daily Star Home Page: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/home/