But our elected officials tell us the truth all the time!

Zachary Roth of TPM explains why some mainstream media fell for the Sanford Spin:

None of these are the biggest crimes in the world, but still: It feels absurd to have to point this out, but politicians and their staffers frequently have reason to dissemble, about issues far more important than an extra-marital affair. Too often, though, the press treats public statements from elected officials' offices -- especially those purporting simply to provide information, like the Appalachian Trail line -- as self-evidently accurate. It's as if, despite everything, some in the press can't quite bring themselves to believe that politicians might try to mislead people.

Part of this is structural. There's almost no acceptable way for a mainstream reporter to explicitly tell readers that the information being put out by a powerful office-holder may be false or misleading. But the only way that this structural flaw will change is if individual reporters are willing to stick out their necks to change it.

Until then, people will read blogs for stories like these.

Exactly. I was driven in great frustration from newspapers and the TV to the internet during the Bush era just because the truth was so obviously NOT what the news was reporting. The mainstream media just hasn't discovered this fact yet, as stunning as that sounds. We want the truth. We can handle it, it's the lies we can't stand.