Maybe more than ever, with so much information in the air, we want reporters to tell us the truth. Who's right? Who's got the facts on their side?

So I was glad this week to see numerous news outlets report categorically that Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's claim to have said "no thanks" to the "Bridge to Nowhere" is false.

But we also want reporters to tell us when a statement is almost certainly wrong, even if it's impossible to know for sure.

Here's an example related to Amendment 58, which would eliminate what proponents call a tax subsidy for oil and gas companies and use additional severance taxes for scholarships.

Opponents of Amendment 58 say the measure would raise heating bills and gasoline prices.

But in analyzing the veracity of these claims on Aug. 1, The Denver Post couldn't find a credible expert - and neither could I - who would say that, in fact, energy bills would increase if Amendment 58 passed. The size of the global oil market, the complexities of natural gas pricing and other factors make it impossible to make such a flat statement.

So the Post concluded that it would be a "stretch" to claim that Amendment 58 would raise energy prices at all.

That's good reporting.

The problem is that other articles in the Post and the Rocky Mountain News confuse readers with he-said, she-said reporting on the topic, regurgitating the opponents' almost certainly false claims that Amendment 58 would raise energy prices and proponents' almost certainly true statements that they would be unaffected.

Sure, it makes journalistic sense to present the views of opponents of the severance tax, even if they're almost undoubtedly wrong.

But rather than simply publish their claims without interpretation, reporters should state in news reports about Amendment 58 that the measure would almost certainly not cause gasoline prices or heating bills to rise. That's a fact.

It may not be the kind of airtight statement of truth that reporters are normally comfortable making, but faced with information saturation, readers need to know both when a claim is outright wrong and when it's almost certainly wrong.

Teen disasters. In a front-page thriller Monday, the Rocky found three "long-loving metro area couples" showing that teen love, like Bristol Palin's, "can endure."

It undoubtedly would have been much easier for the Rocky to find three stories about teen marriages that resulted in poverty, misery and general sadness - with babies paying the price.

Indeed, the Rocky informed us that "58 percent of marriages involving women younger than 18 end in divorce or separation after 15 years."

So why didn't the Rocky profile two disastrous teen marriages and one successful one instead of feeding us three unlikely marriages that were long-lasting?"The Palin announcement had a lot of people in our newsroom and in the community talking about teen marriages," Rocky managing editor Deb Goeken wrote me. "We discussed the overwhelming odds against any teen marriage succeeding, and decided it would be interesting to find some that worked, and to ask the couples for their secrets. We did talk about whether to profile 'winners' and 'losers,' but ultimately thought that it was the marriages that had survived that had more to offer."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wanted to hear from the losers as well. Did they wish they never got married? Would they advise a pregnant teen to have an abortion or put the baby up for adoption? Do they feel like the scars of their youthful mistake ever healed?

Smoking death. In its intelligent obituary Sept. 6 of Dale Chrisman, which included a photo of the Denver artist smoking a cigarette, the Rocky mentioned that he died of "chronic obstructive pulmonary disease." The Rocky should have added that this disease is almost always caused by cigarette smoking.

Shoulder cat. I think it's great that a serious news reporter like the Rocky's Lisa Ryckman also demonstrates exercise techniques as the Rocky's fitness expert.

The profession of journalism needs to be humanized, and Ryckman's dual role helps accomplish this by showing that reporters are regular people who do the everyday things humans do. Too often, a newspaper seems to be viewed as a machine, not a collection of people.

This week, Ryckman wrote that some of her exercises could be accomplished with a "cat slung over your shoulder." I was wishing she'd gotten the cat and put it on her shoulder to show us how it's done. It wouldn't have hurt her credibility as a news reporter.

Jason Salzman, president of Effect Communications, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.