So What's the Problem with Government Spin?

TAPPED: January 2005 Archives
"Ordinary citizens, and even attentive journalists, have never had the capacity to gain the sort of picture of what's going on in the world that the president and the secretaries of state and defense have. Much intelligence information is -- quite rightly -- classified and not available for external scrutiny. You basically have to take the administration's word for it that something's happening if they say it's happening. But right now, neither he nor I nor any other sensible person has any intention of taking their word for it about anything. But what if Bush says something that is true and won't be believed, either by the public or by foreign governments and populations? Real threats might go ignored because we've all lost confidence in the government's truth-telling abilities. It's the administration that cried wolf, and it's a dangerous situation.
--Matthew Yglesias"