>>Knowing better, I don't trust CNN at all, they have a very bad history of twisting (or even manufacturing) the information; peer groups, however, do suffer from occasional appearance of unchecked information, urban legend taken at face value, but these things are easily and quickly corrected.
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>Maybe I'm way off base, I'm thinking that most of the news coming from peers are comgin from MSNBC, CNN, *your favorite news site/tv statation/radio stateion here*.

In this case sure they do, but nobody can watch them all - and a group can. So we do each other the service of sifting through repetitive stuff and extract the important. Additionally, anyone is exposed to local media; an online forum is exposed to dozens of different sets of local media, plus the various websites you may never think of, nor have the time to take a look at.

For instance, I've come across a bit of news on www.freeserbia.com, where they say the Russians have submitted some documents to a CIA senior officer (deputy director or so), including phone recordings, yesterday at Langley. Izvestiya also say that "Moscow has warned Washington of a possible attack of such proportions few weeks in advance. Russian intelligence service states that behind the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York stand: Osama bin Laden's organization, Uzbekistani Islamic Movement and the Taliban government".

Even if this was covered in the regular news, it was probably drowned in hours of other coverage.