But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy?
This is more an indication that we need to start using blogs as sources rather than that we have a problem with how we use major media.
I recently had to leave a one-sided paragraph in [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]:
For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.
We have the fan's side of this. It puts a very different spin on things, but it's in a Usenet post in the thread at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_thread/thread/2649... and it's completely unusuable under Wikipedia sourcing policies (even as a self-published source, since it makes claims about other people).