My impression is that used to be a lot less debunking around, not that all of the debunking is accurate, either. Who's reading all those "7 Things You're Entirely Wrong About" articles from Cracked?

I understand I am dangerously close to a fully general argument now :) But I think there is a lot of debunking going on because the default stance seems to be to believe the mainstream media, and I think 20 years ago the default stance was to be skeptical about it.

How to put it... I would be really surprised if a friend of mine offered a debunking of the abs trainer sold in TV shop because we are not supposed to believe it at all, that is not the default stance... "everybody" understands it is mainly about scamming suckers. And roughly the same about the media in general.