Today we see lots of "repeaters" of information, because people are willing to offer their opinions for free, but few are willing to spend hours sifting through records for hours to find that one gotcha fact. As a result opinions are up and well-researched factually accurate information appears to be down, but is this really a problem.

The problem you describe often more fully applies to the mainstream media than to the internet world. For example, during 2004, while the rest of the mainstream media outlets were content to repeat the "Rathergate" stories as fact, with little or no fact checking of their own, bloggers and others in the internet world were digging deeply into the "documented evidence" and finding significant problems and errors with this. This gave rise to the "pajamas media" group that shared and critiqued results of various analyses.

The same holds true for the fraudulent Reuters photographs during 2006, in which a Palestinian stringer photo-shopped smoke across Beirut to make the situation appear more dire than it was. Mainstream media just ran the story -- bloggers and internet readers caught the facts. Ditto for the alleged Israeli targeting of an ambulance. The MSM was delighted to demonize Israel with the story despite it not even coming close to passing the "smell" test.

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