UPDATED: Attacker at Ohio State University killed

This is the beauty of living in a free society with the guarantees the Bill of Rights gave us. There are a gazillion modes of disseminating information and there are all kinds of people and organizations availing themselves of the freedom to publish or broadcast, each with their own standards for choosing what to disseminate.

Some individuals or organizations aim to be professional and transparent. Others don't -- maybe they want to deceive or they want to advance an agenda of some sort. Some do a good job with regard to objectivity and truth, others don't. As an individual, you are perfectly free to evaluate the methods and track record and the likelihood of accuracy of someone reporting news -- from the guy on twitter to a large organization with hundreds of reporters and bureaus all around the world.

You are even free to pick up a camera or a microphone or a pen and cocktail napkin. ... and do it yourself. Maybe you have the clairvoyant ability to "vet" info related to breaking news that you are twisting yourself into a pretzel to criticize others about, and you can do it better. It will make you a "journalist," *gasp* which contrary to what you seem to believe, doesn't give you entry into some monolithic club with rules dictating the methods you have to use to uncover and report the things you are interested in reporting about.

Otherwise, as a consumer of what others report, you are perfectly free to evaluate the sources of information you come across on your own and decide for yourself whether you value what they offer. It's what everyone else does -- whether it is the partisan who simply wants affirmation of whatever it is he or she wants to believe (how you come across on here to me), or the person who wants to get at some sort of objective truth and evaluates a news organizations' track record of getting things right.

You have it in your head that the common standards many journalists have CHOSEN to adopt are due to a stringent code of ethics grounded in some didactic moral reasoning. When the reality is that it is like everyone else selling something -- if you are putting yourself out there as a source of news, to succeed you want to be credible to the greatest number of people. That has traditionally been the tried and true way to retain an audience and sell advertising.

But if you think that [name your source of information] isn't credible. ... you are perfectly free to find a more credible source of information as you see it, or you can get out there yourself and fill in the gap in reliable information you seem to see everywhere. I personally find it ridiculous. People misinforming others is not a new construct. It's what happens when everyone has a right to be a "journalist" and there is freedom. Even with that, I'd argue that we are better informed than ever, because we have so many more modes of disseminating information, which can be widely disseminated instantaneously in ways never possible before. That doesn't come with the incomprehensible guarantee you seem to want that everything is true or "vetted" or comes without some bias. Most people get that.