Social Networking is Ruining Traditional Media

Long have we debated the media's influence over our lives, and long have the media players tried to convince us that they are merely providing us the facts. Fox News says, "We report, you decide." The New York Times claims, "All the news that's fit to print." (Weak if you ask me), and CNN proudly swears, "The Most Trusted Name in News". So who are we to rely on?
With the social networking boom as of late, it seems as though we're looking to ourselves for fair and balanced news. Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, and Tumblr.com have millions of people just like you and me, pounding away at their keyboards everyday, attempting to rival major news sites like MSNBC.com and CNN.com, to bring you news stories and most likely their take on it. An interesting approach considering major news networks spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to convince us that they are not giving us "their take" on stories.
Even more powerful are the social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. These sites are so easy that kids could use them, and do. Posting links to political articles, videos of Obama speeches, and Tweets about current events, have turned everyone into social media reporters, whether they knew what they were doing or not. But, is this good for media as a whole? Is everyone having a voice a positive thing, or could it be damaging the quality of what we're learning to a point that could be ruining our major media outlets?
Many networks have joined the social media bandwagon and are Tweeting the top stories, posting headlines to Facebook, and broadcasting news clips on Myspace. The articles and clips seem dumbed down for for those outlets, but why? Are the people assigned to those posts dumber, or are they targeting dumber people? I think the latter is the obvious choice.
I look at today's news with an open mind. I no longer look at what I'm being told, as fact. Often I go to both CNN.com and FoxNews.com to compare stories and draw my own conclusion, but what does that say about what has happened to the mainstream media? Where are we supposed to look to for information and not influence? The web is very tempting and accessible. But, how are we to know who to trust behind the mask of web design and flash intros? I guess it's no big deal that my dog doesn't know how to fetch the paper, something I always dreamed of having as a kid. I suppose I'll just train him to setup my RSS Feeds and delete spam.