The Birth Of Information; The Death Of Reason

With all of the information that is being presented and the easy access to it, people have to pick and choose what they will listen to for news. Unfortunately, many people choose to listen to what reaffirms their beliefs rather than unbiased news outlets. This led to a startling phenomenon of "reliable news media sources" being flooded with untrue news from the Internet. These rumors gain credibility when they are substansiated by other outlets, but the story remains untrue.
Elizabeth Kolbert's article "The Things That People Say" detailed an occurrence of this during Barack Obama's presidential campaign. "Birthers" insisted that President Obama was not a citizen of the United States because he didn't have a birth certificate. Even when evidence was presented that he was a citizen, people continued to ignore that news in favor of news that discredited him because they disagreed with his policies. The Internet did not help matters because anyone could find articles to support any theory that they had because the Internet news sources aren't held to that same journalistic standards as legitimate journalists.
Another example of this is the "death panels" that Sarah Palin alleged were going to be covered under Barack Obama's health care plan (noticing a theme here...?). Even after all of the news media have rescinded their initial reports about the fake story, some people still bring them up as a reason not to support the health care bill. In this current state of biased media it's not a question of truthfulness, it's a question of what verifies MY point?