I had started writing a longish entry about my reasons to mistrust news media in general but I never finished it. Maybe I’ll post bits and pieces over time instead.

Anyway, here’s a good example of what I find problematic in the traditional news media. Robert Kennedy Jr. produced an article on thimerosal for Salon and Rolling Stone. Unfortunately, the article contains so much misinformation and crass misrepresentation of facts, probably in the interest of generating an emotional response from the readers, that it is quite useless. I learned of this case through Overlawyered. Skeptico has two good posts about it: “Thimerosal update” and “Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article”. Orac also has a post that I find terminologically accurate in qualifying the article: “Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet”.

[Warning: people who are not equipped with a thick asbestos skin should not visit the following web site. Something Awful is not known to be cuddly, fuzzy, or even civil.]

Meanwhile, this Photoshop Phirday at Something Awful couldn’t be more apropos regarding the general problem of media credibility.