New Realm of Reporting?

In the wake of Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal, there has been much attention given to the woman he paid over $4000 for, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, or Kristen as he knew her. Obviously, since prostitution is illegal, her "company" website wasn't packed with personal information on her. And as is to be expected, she wasn't jumping at the chance to be interviewed and put all over television. So where did reporters go to get information on her? 

Myspace and Facebook.

Pictures, background information and her hobbies were all pulled off of those social networking sites by prominent news organizations like CNN, which not only used the sites, but have even written on how the sites have affected the gathering of information in this story.

It is an interesting new avenue for reporting for sure, but it also leaves one wondering, how reliable are these sources? People can pretend to be anything they want on the internet, and we all know that people occasionally fabricate stories while being interviewed in person, why couldn't they be embellishing on their myspace page as well? Will the veracity of self posted information be permitted solely by preceding the information with "According to ______ 's Myspace/Facebook?" While they are great reporting tools, the Eliot Spitzer scandal should cause journalists to take a look at how they view reporting from social networking sites.