Information wars

I don't think real persons necessarily are more reliable than written sources on the internet. Of course, you have to be selective when it comes to which sources you can trust. A lot of articles on Wikipedia give you the opportunity to decide for yourself if the sources the information comes from are reliable or not, by referring to the sources that are used.

A good example is a wiki article about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Nine days after the explosion, on May 29, the government and BP officials estimated the spill flow rate to 5000 barrels per day. Most people probably believed them, as they initially were credible. However, on June 15 the estimates were raised to 35,000 to 60,000 bpd by government scientists, which is a lot more dramatic.

I got this information from NY Times and CNN, which I consider reliable sources, but I only found it because it was cited in this wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_horizon_oil_spill#Spill_flow_rate

At the same time you could say that the BP officials weren't as reliable as they should be. Right now Wikipedia is an online proof of just that.

References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/us/31spill.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/06/15/oil.spill.disaster/index.html