Multi-tasking and trust metrics?

The Mediamorphosis conference team just showed a “video briefing” indicating that simultaneous usage of media–watching TV, talking on the phone, and using a computer, for example–is on the rise. Joe Pilotta of BIGresearch has data from surveys (email and phone) of 14,000 users on their multi-tasking behaviors.
Now Katherine van Jan is talking about the kinds of behaviors they are seeing around simultaneous media usage in both their anecdotal experience and their work experience as ethnographers and researchers, and the discussion is shifting to what credibility is–how do you know what to trust?
Ezra Klein is commenting: Journalists are just one piece of the story, and you shouldn’t trust anyone completely.
Howard Rheingold: Readers learn that coverage of events is not always framed properly–that casts down on the rest of the work–Suddenly readers have the opportunity to find out things on their own that they didn’t have before, and that is very important.
Shayne Bowman: RSS newsreaders turn off everything but pure text–they are a shortcut to personal evaluation of credibility of a news item.

The discussion is still drifting back to the “blog magic,” but Joe P is taking the conversation back to his study of youth culture today and how authenticity is key.

Ezra Klein responds: Blogs work because you couldn’t pay me to put anyone on my web site–and the lack of trust in big media and the trust in personalized media is more recent. Fifty years ago, big media was it–but now there is SUCH easy access to information. And as you form your own truth, you find people who agree with you.