In my personal life I have an acquaintance who has an issue with lying. He hardly ever tells the truth and you will even find him fibbing about little things, such as seeing a movie. The extent of his lies do depend on the type of conversation, though. If he starts off descriptive then I assume a latent performance function exists because he likes to show that he is smart. Because of his latent purpose I do not entirely believe his story, even if he produces some form of evidence.
'Evidence' cited in some papers is no longer that reliable, though. I never really thought to question information written by journalists. Obviously there were some sources I never looked to, but generally information in newspapers is supposed to be dependable. It was upsetting after looking at the source of the studies quoted in papers, to see that journalists actually considered these studies good, unbiased information. Several of these were familiar to me, like the fear of germs in public restrooms poll. I understand journalists are between a rock and a hard place but there are other ways to get information out without jeopardizing their careers.
The point of the chapter, however, is to get people in the frame of mind to question what they are being told. Even though the blogger that almost ruined Shirley Sherrod's career spliced the actual video to be misleading, it took several other broadcasts by other stations of the same wrong story for one of them to finally question the content of an individual who stands by no journalistic oath. It would have never gotten as far as it did if these information gatherers had bothered to check the facts. And these are supposed to be media literate people; why are they not checking the function of the communication or the actual communicator himself? That would essentially be like letting me write as a critic for the New York Time's; just because I can read does not mean I can pick quality books.
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