Does the media influence society or reflects us?

I believe that the media influences society more than it reflects us. Although the media might write about what society is doing and reports on it, they change it in a way that makes us influence each other more than it reflects us. The decisions that we make daily in life is made by what the media writes, videos or shows to us and other people blame the media for the bad events that happen around the world and the issues in our society today, however no one looks at the big picture and sees that the media is just writing what they see which consequently leads to others reading and watching about it and then copying. For example.: the london riots was all around the media in good ways and bad ways, it influenced other teenagers in social networking sites to be part of the riot by twitter, Facebook and more so if the media was not there then there would not have been a lot of people because the news would not have spread around however people needed to know about the London Riots so they could stay away from it and report on why the London Riot is happening because it's our right to know what is happening, but when the media does try to help us why are they known for influencing others?
It's because they twists the words they say and change the story a little for entertainment purposes, the Milly Dowler case was a shocking discovery of what the media can do and how it can influence others today. Magazines gives us different interpretations of what we can think and evidently it is more negative than positive.