The news about suspected cheating in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination's English (Syllabus B) paper has prompted a rethink on how reliable information available on the Internet is.

The Smoking Gun website reveals fabrications in James Frey's memoir, "A Million Little Pieces".

A message on an Internet bulletin board precipitated the tumble to disgrace of Chinese computer scientist Chen Jin, accused of falsifying research and stealing chip designs.

The truth is often out there, and the Internet has increasingly become a channel for it to come to light, though not always through firewalls.

And blogs, which now number more than 100 million worldwide, play no small part in redressing and supplementing stories told in the conventional press, or giving the little guy a chance to fight back.

BBC's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds put it succinctly: blogs "exist to agitate, to question, to swap information, to provide leads and opinions, and generally to act as guerrilla forces against the massed ranks of the mainstream media".

For example, bloggers exposed as spurious the documents at the centre of CBS's George W. Bush-National Guard duty story.

Yet notwithstanding the whistle-blowing, how much can people trust what appears on blogs? Haven't they the power to spread mischief, or worse?

Fact may be surrounded by plenty of fiction, but people needn't be overly worried just yet. According to recent surveys, blogs don't exactly command the respect of their mainstream media brethren.

Blogs are the least trusted news source, according to a recent opinion poll on trust in the media commissioned by the BBC and Reuters.

Posing questions to individuals from 10 countries and regions, including the US, the UK and South Korea, the survey found that only 25 per cent trusted blogs. In contrast, 23 per cent didn't find them credible.

Eighty-two per cent chose national television as the most trusted news source, though Americans remain highly critical of news media reporting.

In China, blogs enjoy a slightly different fortune. In a 2005 survey of 10 Asia Pacific markets, public relations firm Edelman found that institutional investors in China - a group consisting of the government, media, senior executives and some others - tended to believe what they read on blogs.

The China sample averaged 5.8 on a 10-point scale, with 10 reflecting extreme trust. That's much higher than the average of those from other Asia Pacific countries and regions, including Australia and Japan.

By the end of 2005 there were 16 million blogs on the mainland.

Edelman's Asia Pacific President Alan VanderMolen believes the increasing ability to participate and interact with the media, something he calls the democratization of the media, is a welcome sign.

"I think it's positive for society, I think it's a positive thing for governments, and I think it's a positive thing for business (too)."