Trust the bloggers? Who can you believe online?

Dan Gilmor, in his book 'We the Media. Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People', asks whose information you can trust online? He concludes there is a lack of framework for establishing the veracity of information and the credibility of the author. He calls for: "A reliable reputation system world allow us to verity people and judge the veracity of the things they say based, in part, on what people we trust say about them."
There are already some systems in place for checking the reputation of individuals within online communities - look at the way eBay operates its ratings system. Would this be appropriate for sources of information online, or corporate web sites?
There is a common argument that the public are becoming increasingly media savvy - Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, used a lecture at the University of Central Lancashire to quote a variety of statistics which indicate that the public are getting progressively more cynical about the motives of public figures (1). However, others see little evidence for this claim, researchers in a report for the UK media regulator Ofcom warn: "Notwithstanding widespread speculation that the public has become increasingly 'media-savvy', it remains unclear how far rigorous evidence supports or qualifies this claim." (2)
So who can you trust online? Can readers distinguish between something written by a journalist, public relations practitioner, or a fellow consumer? If they can, do they lend different weight to the information?
Matt

(1) Rusbridger, A., (1999) Who can you trust? Aslib Proceedings, Vol 51 No 2, Feb 1999 pp37-45
(2) Livingstone, S., Van Couvering, E., & Thumim, N., (2004) Adult Media Literacy. A report compiled by the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics, for Ofcom

Comments

[David Tebbutt]

Chains of trust help. If someone I trust says they value someone else, the trust is inherited. We're not talking blogrolls here. We're probably talking word of mouth or qualified links in a blog, through Furl, or whatever. I you arrive somewhere that appears good, maybe by following a Technorati pointer, surely you'd look around, to see what else they've written, who trackbacks to them, what sort of comments are made. All this is monumentally informative.