The recent passing of Walter Cronkite has caused many of us to ponder the meaning and evolution of the word "credibility." As people offer their impressions of "the most trusted man in America," they seem to long for the days when they could take Cronkite's word as the gospel, and they didn't need to temper it with varying perspectives or sources.

Was the CBS Evening News actually any more credible than any other medium? Or has our nation simply become less trusting as they have become more sophisticated? Perhaps we are like the child who finally learns the truth about Santa Claus and therefore second guesses every other factual or fictional tale.

Many people contend that political slanting and less diligent fact checking have led our news to become sensationalistic. They might believe that even Walter Cronkite would have trouble earning our trust in our contemporary news environment. I agree and disagree. I believe that our age of increased communication has simply brought new light to the same age-old trend. Are our leaders more corrupt than they once were, or do we just know more about them because of the growth in media? Are our celebrities wilder than their predecessors, or are our diminishing opinions the result of more aggressive paparazzi? Do our news agencies inject more opinion than they once did, or are we just more aware of it because we can now easily compare fifty versions of the same story?

Do I think anyone can once again hold the title of "most trusted person in America?" No, I don't. Even in the technology world, we can no longer read a whitepaper by an industry analyst without first thinking about how the author is paid. In this day and age, we have to invest the time to read various conflicting angles on the same topic to determine our own opinion. Then, we have to recognize that our hard-earned notion is still just the opinion of one person. Someone else might read the same assortment of articles while reaching a completely different conclusion. Whether you are researching health care reform, vendor evaluations, or your best option for local Italian food, there are so many opinions and vantage points to sort through that none of them can be heralded as the "most trusted source." In fact, I think the most credible sources of information these days are review sites and services (such as comparison shopping engines, TripAdvisor, etc), but stories like this one about Yelp make you wonder if anything can be trusted anymore.

Overall, I find myself becoming much less interested in following snippets from one particular news source and much more interested in finding a compelling story and gathering various perspectives on it. Ask me about the "Octomom" and I couldn't care less (I didn't even know her name until I went to copy that Wikipedia link). Want to know my take on Paula Abdul parting ways with American Idol? You won't hear it...I'm not even sure that's newsworthy. However, if you ask me about prospective justice Sonia Sotomayor, I also can't comment because I am still gathering various viewpoints in order to formulate a solid opinion.

Maybe the difference between the days of Walter Cronkite and our current age of information influx has to do with the selection process. Decades ago, the news agencies decided what was newsworthy and what was filtered away from our eyes, ears and water coolers. Today, we have access to almost everything that transpires across the world, and it's our job to do the filtering.