[laconian]

Empirical evidence aside, do you think a publishing model like HuffPo's can possibly produce an informed populace? There's very little fact checking, no followup if they get their facts wrong, and most of it's probably just reworded press releases from PR lackeys anyhow.

[quanticle]

And how is that different from the "yellow journalism" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? If anything, the situation is a lot better now since the barriers around publishing are much much lower than they were back then. I fail to see how Ariana Huffington is any worse at journalism than Pulitzer, Hearst, or, say, Murdoch.