[alan_cx]

I'm from the UK. We have tabloids. They will take a fact like (made up example) Snowden wanted all phones turned off, and simply make up the rest. 1) to demonize the subject, and 2) to put a more sexy sounding story in the paper. So, my natural default is to hope to believe the simplest "fact" in the story, if that.

Maybe you have faith in your newspapers, and to be totally honest I don't actually know how Americans feel about their news papers. But you do have Murdoch floating around, so Americans are being manipulated somewhere. But I sure as hell dont take them at their word. For me, newspapers are as accurate as "the internet".

But to me, that read like a slightly more sophisticated that a UK tabloid smear job.

I do how ever accept that my UK perspective on the press might well be very different to a US one.