PBS :: NewHour – Credibility Gap, from January 13, 2005.
Strongly suggest (urge) you to visit this site and watch the videos (audio also available) and then read the article.

Recent high-profile media failures and blunders have tainted Americans’ views of journalism. Terence Smith leads a discussion on how these scandals and lapses in journalistic judgment impact the public’s perception of the news media.
The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
This relates, in some ways, to the …

From PR Week: PRWeek.com Q&A: Richard Edelman (Registration Required)

On the Edelman Agency’s release of the sixth annual trust barometer survey:

For years, we’ve seen that the traditional pyramid of influence, where you talk to opinion formers at the gentleman’s club, is disintegrating because you have the democratization of media and trust issues with major institutions. This has now come to pass. It means that parts of PR – like employee communications – have become as important as investor relations or talking to The Wall Street Journal. Because if you don’t …

First we had the rise of blogging (Pyra Labs, LiveJournal) … yadda, yadda … then, we had the adoption of blogs for business and PR (any of these) … yadda, yadda … now, the inevitable. Stop the music.
Remember Debbie Boone? You Light Up My Life?
It was 1977. The song had a dramatic effect on my generation. You couldn’t escape it. The song set the record for the most weeks at the top of Billboard’s hit list. It played incessantly on radio. You do …

VW blows up over fake car ad :: Car firm threatens to sue makers of bomb ad. It’s intriguing. And it looks almost exactly like a real Volkswagen ad. But Volkswagen is having none of it.
And, this bit of interesting news … related as it is the new VW media buying agency:

AdAge.com (Subscription Required)
VW U.S. MEDIA BUYING ACCOUNT GOES TO MEDIACOM
Work Valued at $430 Million
January 28, 2005
QwikFIND ID: AAQ28Z
By Dagmar Mussey and Lisa Sanders
WOLFSBURG, Germany (AdAge.com) — Volkswagen of America today will announce it …