News Media - Love them or leave them?

I was reading in the paper the other day about gas prices and what can be done about them. Every news paper or TV station has someone with an idea - and they are all different. We definitely need someone to search out the news for us since, in our busy lives, we don't always have time. So for that, I'm grateful to the reporters. My question is why is everything exagerated? The stock market either soars or plunges - what happened to went up or down? The housing market is in the toilet. Ok - where? Here in PA and from what I hear, in NJ as well, we didn't have the spike in prices as some other parts of the country, we had - for the most part - competent lenders so we don't have the bottom falling out here. Do we hear about that? Maybe on page E27 where on page 1 they talk about the "sky is falling". I heard an editorial the other day on the radio and I have to agree with it. We have a love/hate relationship with the media. We depend on them for our news source, but like everyone else, they are pushed into a corner with deadlines and too much to cover so they only skim the surface. The problem is, that we pay for it if we only rely on them for all of our news. I think we, as a nation, should take back the initiative and start researching on our own. Maybe we should only believe 25% of what we read? I'd love to hear other thoughts on this subject.