Hi theodora, not knowing something does not make you stupid in the least. Truth or fiction and Snopes are "mythbusting" sites.

Rumor, innuendo and falsehoods have always been spread, but the rise of the internet has made the spread of misinformation far worse. You have perhaps seen these chainmails yourself.

Snopes tasks themselves with trying to determine the source and validity of these and other "urban Myths" Overall they do solid research. Some issues simply come down to semantics and perceptions.

Sites like Snopes and Wikipedia are what I refer to as "Gateway" information, a starting place. Those sites from time to time make mistakes, misquote people and fail to identify sources. I recomend anyone who wants to learn more about an issue, go deeper, identify the sources and look at them yourselves.

Not to get too politcal here but there is a recent example is the recent immigration law in Arizona. A lot of comments have been made by people who had not bothered to read the bill, I did read it.

The interesting thing I found was that in regards to identifying illegal immingrants, the AZ law specifically requires that the person in question has to already be under arrest AND the police still have to have probable cause of questioning on top of that. By comparison current Federal immigration rules do not require probable cause, in effect the AZ adds a layer of protection for illegal immigrants that current Federal law does not.

The above by the way is not meant to start a debate about the AZ law as that would violate the scope of the forum, but to point out how the truth often becomes lost in all the media noise.

My point, in bringing this up is to always challenge what you see, what hear and what you read. The modern media can no longer be trusted with telling you the truth. What often passes for journalism these days has become sloppy at the least, and deliberately biased at worst.