Contributed by: filbert Friday, August 12 2005 @ 05:44 AM CST
This[*1] is real, though. Trust me.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which conducts regular polling on attitudes toward the media, said that in 1985 about 84 percent of Americans said they believed most of what they read in their daily newspaper. By 2004, that had dropped to 54 percent.
What isn’t clear is whether fabrications have become more common, or just easier to uncover.
These days, an army of amateur and professional media critics have made a hobby out of attempting to discredit news reports and statements by politicians.
Skepticism is healthy. Just don’t fall into the trap of being asymetrically skeptical (i.e. skeptical of the right but not of the left, or vice versa).