[alvarosm]

I'm not thinking of corporations. Local govt, etc. The study was made by -surprise- a university in the state where olive oil is produced. Btw about ads there's nothing more effective than a journalist that does it for free. There's another thread now in HN about marijuana's awesomeness. Don't people think for themselves anymore? do you all take a package of propaganda and ideology and blissfully swallow it without thinking twice?

[stanmancan]

The problem is that people should be able to trust the news, not that they don't think for themselves. I do plenty of "thinking", I just don't have any time to evaluate the authenticity of my olive oil. Think about how many decisions you need to make in a day; if you had to verify every article, product, or piece of information you ingest on a daily basis you wouldn't have time to do anything else.

We have a huge problem where you really can't trust anything you hear or see; especially news. However, what's the solution? If I want to be up to date on world politics who do I trust? How do I know I can trust them? What about a new product? The manufacturer says it's healthy; an "article"says its not. Who do I trust? Is the article genuine or paid off by a competitor to boost their own sales? Do I have to do my own research and studies to find out the truth? That's hardly scalable.

[CuriousSkeptic]

OTOH a site like HN do produce this analysis for each link, by means of comments.

It would be pretty interesting to have something like HN, perhaps a bit broader in topic selections, where the analysis was captured in a more structured manner and published for other services to reuse in various ways to aid the reader.