"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"

That is a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and the blogosphere certainly provides sunlight. It was argued recently that the blogosphere simply could not compete with the MSM over the hurricane coverage:

This week showed a major weakness in the blogosphere. While good things are being done all over for the victims, blogs were pummeled by the MSM as a whole and TV news in particular.
[...]
Blogs can't compete with this onslaught. While the blogosphere is a major part of the information wagon train, they are much better with slower moving issues such as the Dan Rather affair or the Trent Lott kerfuffle.

It turns out that the faith placed in most of the MSM was unjustified, again (via Instapundit):

I was wrong. I bought into the media hype about rapes and murders when I should have known better. The media was dead wrong with regard to all of these stories.

See here:

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide.

Also see this roundup. And obviously we are talking about the media in the United States. Most of the European media doesn't even try to represent reality anymore (see here and here).