That's the big Poynter question this morning, as a 4-month old from Iowa is having her death investigated for possible signs of neglect and child abuse. Luckily for the police, the parents of Tryniti Hill were stupid or petty enough to basically write out their confessions on each other's walls. And here we were just telling you not to do that!

The problem of course, is verifying this information. How do we know that the couple is who they say there, and aren't a bunch of trolls? How can we take their accusations to each other as legitimate without knowing if they were motivated by a desire to see their ex put in jail? But as ">Kelly McBride writes:

I got a call last week from Dennis Kendall, director of broadcast news for Quincy Newspapers Inc., which owns KTIV-TV, the NBC affiliate in town. He had two questions: Should we link to their MySpace pages? Should we quote the status update that mentions the confession?

It's a mistake to ignore MySpace or any other social networking phenomenon as a resource. Although the technology is relatively new, many of the challenges are quite old. Journalists have a responsibility to ensure they publish the truth. There's a difference between a relative announcing that the father confessed and the police chief announcing it. When the chief says it, it is safe to believe that he is in a position to know.

Unfortunately, MySpace and social networking "captures" have become an increasingly popular in the media thanks to Chris Hanson and To Catch a Predator, as well as all those CSI episodes about the Internet. Whether that evidence will stand up in court is another matter entirely.