The news about suspected cheating in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education 
Examination's English (Syllabus B) paper has prompted a rethink on how reliable 
information available on the Internet is.
The Smoking Gun website reveals fabrications in James Frey's memoir, "A 
Million Little Pieces". 
A message on an Internet bulletin board precipitated the tumble to disgrace 
of Chinese computer scientist Chen Jin, accused of falsifying research and 
stealing chip designs. 
The truth is often out there, and the Internet has increasingly become a 
channel for it to come to light, though not always through firewalls.
And blogs, which now number more than 100 million worldwide, play no small 
part in redressing and supplementing stories told in the conventional press, or 
giving the little guy a chance to fight back.
BBC's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds put it succinctly: blogs 
"exist to agitate, to question, to swap information, to provide leads and 
opinions, and generally to act as guerrilla forces against the massed ranks of 
the mainstream media".
For example, bloggers exposed as spurious the documents at the centre of 
CBS's George W. Bush-National Guard duty story.
Yet notwithstanding the whistle-blowing, how much can people trust what 
appears on blogs? Haven't they the power to spread mischief, or worse?
Fact may be surrounded by plenty of fiction, but people needn't be overly 
worried just yet. According to recent surveys, blogs don't exactly command the 
respect of their mainstream media brethren.
Blogs are the least trusted news source, according to a recent opinion poll 
on trust in the media commissioned by the BBC and Reuters. 
Posing questions to individuals from 10 countries and regions, including the 
US, the UK and South Korea, the survey found that only 25 per cent trusted 
blogs. In contrast, 23 per cent didn't find them credible. 
Eighty-two per cent chose national television as the most trusted news 
source, though Americans remain highly critical of news media reporting. 
In China, blogs enjoy a slightly different fortune. In a 2005 survey of 10 
Asia Pacific markets, public relations firm Edelman found that institutional 
investors in China - a group consisting of the government, media, senior 
executives and some others - tended to believe what they read on blogs. 
The China sample averaged 5.8 on a 10-point scale, with 10 reflecting extreme 
trust. That's much higher than the average of those from other Asia Pacific 
countries and regions, including Australia and Japan.
By the end of 2005 there were 16 million blogs on the mainland. 
Edelman's Asia Pacific President Alan VanderMolen believes the increasing 
ability to participate and interact with the media, something he calls the 
democratization of the media, is a welcome sign.
"I think it's positive for society, I think it's a positive thing for 
governments, and I think it's a positive thing for business (too)."