I can provide you a link to a page that tells you how to build a H-bomb, if you want.
I don't know so much about being able to discern between opinion and fact in the papers (to me, if it's an editorial then it's opinion, and the rest of the paper is fact), but online a lot of people can take things very wrongly.
Take blogs on games consoles, for instance (only because I've read my fair share of reports about them
) - many people will take whatever is said in the blog and preach it as if it were the Book itself. If someone says it in a blog, then it must be true and gods help those who do not believe!
Yet then you look at games sites like IGN, 1up, Gamespot, and you see members going crazy at the reporters on the site for being biased, and throwing opinion into reports.
Depending on where you look, you can find both people who believe everything they read on the internet, and those who demand pure facts.
Add in the fact that a lot of sites will sensationalise headlines to get viewers, and it just makes things worse (for example, Gametrailers.com have a little bit of footage at the end of episodes of Bonus Round which give a bit of a clue as to what happens in the next episode. Last weeks ended with Davd Jaffe - director of the original God of War, and one of Sony Entertainment Studios key assests - saying he'd have not put Blu-ray into the PS3. This was instantly seized upon by thousands on the net, and it was reported that Jaffe would make the PS3 better, if he were the one making decisions, by not have put Blu-ray in the PS3. The whole quote, though, which hadn't been heard, was
that he'd do that to make it cheaper. In his eyes Blu-ray is the way forward, he would just have it as an add-on to make things cheaper).
I think what I'm trying to say is that a lot of media these days (particularly tabloids - no names mentioned, such as
The Daily Mirror or
The Sun) will purposely sensationalise things to get views.