“Less than half of Americans, regardless of partisanship, have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media,” according to a Gallup poll.

You know, I suspect it is actually responsible for media outlets to simply repeat what officials have said. The other day I heard a brief report in which the Republicans said a bill extended its target audience and the Democrats said the bill did not. Is that not a matter for media investigation, something they can verify independent of the officials quoted? The bill either covers the same number or types of people as it did before or it covers more or less. And if it can’t be determined because of the murkiness of the bill’s language, then the lawmakers should be ridiculed. This is just one point of distrust I have for most media outlets.