>>>>>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8237558.stm
>>>>>
>>>>>Summary: A newspaper in Bangladesh took an article from The Onion at face value, and reprinted it.
>>>>
>>>>That's amusing, but it points to a larger problem with modern media - consolidation. If a story gets on a newswire, it gets republished by hundreds if not thousands of media outlets with little or no checking. Misinformation, or outright lies can rapidly spread world-wide.
>>>
>>>IMO the problem is the opposite of consolidation. The media we used to be able to trust are falling by the wayside. Now it's every Tom, Dick, and Harry with an internet connection. It's a crapshoot.
>>
>>That's true to a certain extent, but it's a slightly different issue. By "newswire" I meant "authoritative" news sources, which are becoming fewer and fewer. There are lots of sites with little or no credibility.
>>
>>Is The Drudge Report authoritative? The Huffington Post? The Smoking Gun? The Register?
>
>Some of them do not write their own stories, but only link to other news stories out there. The question is whether or not the links all go to reliable news sources. Some point to opinion pieces or news stories that were printed but were really 'interviews' and they are not 'news.'

News "aggregators" have a dicey value proposition, IMO. Some major portals, like Yahoo, work that way, too - they don't write any stories, they just pull them off the wire.

I just get concerned sometimes, on slow news days when some "man bites dog" story gets picked up by a news service. Makes you wonder if it's some cub reporter at a local affiliate, who was too busy choking down her lunchtime burrito to make it to the scene on time, so she ended up interviewing the local gossip, who won't admit the deputy wouldn't talk to him so he had to "enhance" the story a little based on what he could see around the corner and past the crime scene tape.