Cries and whispers
Yes, the dissenting opinions sometimes found their way into the small print - a sentence or two buried at the end of an article where they had scant chance to compete with the 72 pt headlines screaming the bogus scare stories at the panicky public day after day. So too with the talk shows. Never were the dissenting experts given a prime-time forum to present their views, and it's highly disingenuous of you to assert:
All of the conflicting data you mention was reported by the main stream media so your reply was irrelevant to the debate on whether or not mainstream media is reasonably reliable.
Irrelevant my foot!
You're trying to equate shouts with whispers, and speciously claiming they carry equal weight. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the article in Alcaray's recent post, points out, the mainstream press was a willing accomplice to the Bush adminstration fibs about the mythical Iraqi WMD, and it is still avoiding any acknowledgement of responsibilty for helping mislead the public.
One of the ways the media did that was by headlining the scare stories and burying the dissenting opinions. That, in fact, is a common tactic. Many people read just the headlines; fewer read articles in their entirety; fewer still pore over those critical phrases which may contradict or cast doubt on the looming headlines. So it was with the aluminum tubes, the Niger yellowcake, the bearings, the drones, and all the rest of it.
Buried.
Like some people's heads.
S