I guess it depends what you categorize as social media. I think bloggers also fall into the social media camp. There's a very thin line between bloggers and journalists. Would you say the bloggers on huffington post talk chain-mails and heresy? I think in China the big name bloggers are probably equally respected as any journalist would be.

I'm slightly doubtful that someone would create a fake scene of 22 kids who got stabbed, for the purposes of social media juice.

I tend to agree with pretoriusB re the HuffPo. I also think bloggers/the new 'blogger-journalist' are more suited to investigative and opinion pieces rather than the breaking news o the day. Certainly you are right that there is a fine line between blogging and journalist.

With regard to 22 children stabbed, I agree that I don't think someone has made this up. But this is in china, not in the west, and as other posters have noted and I tend to agree having spent some time in china (well.. A couple kf weeks) that social media >> their state outlets. There are numerous instances of weibo being used to circumvent state censorship, despite being censored itself- the enterprising Chinese netizens use alliteration and 'read between the lines' to overcome this.

>Would you say the bloggers on huffington post talk chain-mails and heresy?

Huffington Post? That's the worst kind of BS blogging and bad journalism. If HP's your idea of "social media", then they are far worse than traditional media...