“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I heard those words early in my journalism career. Reporters are trained to verify information they receive by confirming with a trusted source, but the media landscape has changed, even since I first heard that adage.

With social networks like Facebook and Twitter, news flows faster than ever. And the news is no longer centrally controlled, making it potentially less trustworthy. Reporters have more access to information through social media, but it’s no longer just journalists delivering that information. The power of information-sharing now rests in the hands of everyday people — that means you.

In a Harvard Nieman Report, Mark Little, founder and CEO of social news agency Storyful, wrote:

Any individual or media organization can instantly send a piece of news to the web. This makes things more competitive — in print, everyone always wanted to be first (and right). But social media and the speed of digital news raise the stakes.

We’ve been watching this play out all week, following the Boston Marathon bombings. For instance, reports from trusted news sources to individual Twitter users inaccurately stated authorities held a suspect in custody.

Georgetown political scientist Jonathan Ladd suggests the rise of the Internet and cable news, and the resulting diversification and fragmentation of the media, have caused a general distrust in the media. He writes in a blog post, “Because of technological changes, such as the rise of cable and the Internet, as well as regulatory changes, such as the end of the fairness doctrine, the media industry has become much more diverse and fragmented.”

He's right. But I'd take that one step further to include, specifically, social media's effect on fragmented news consumption.

And it’s not just the social media accounts of journalists and news organizations. Media consumers now have more opportunities to glean news straight from primary sources.

We saw Friday how Boston residents and reporters shared information on social networks about the manhunt for the bombing suspects. On social media, they shared real-time photos, videos and information about the circumstances they witnessed.

They also shared information they heard over police scanners. A decade ago, listening in on law enforcement chatter required expensive equipment, limiting police scanners' use mainly to hobbyists and journalists.

Today, you need nothing more than a smartphone. Apps like the 5-0 Radio Police Scannerbrowse scanners around the world, porting criminal activities and police information to you anywhere.

Immediately following the bombings Monday, I used 5-O on my iPhone to access information from Boston. But the whole time, I remained aware that the officers I heard weren't always aware of the facts. What they said wasn’t necessarily true or verifiable. And I couldn't verify it, I shouldn't report it.

The average person may not operate with that same filter, though. Unverified information heard over the scanner could turn into a tweet, which could get picked up by a media outlet and, thus, become a (potentially inaccurate) news report.

In his book Trust Me, I'm Lying, Ryan Holiday writes about the dangerous and exploitative practices of bloggers and social media users, which in turn, can spread like wildfire. It’s a pattern we’ve witnessed this week.

"The more immediate the nature of their publishing medium (blogs, then newspapers, then magazines), the more heavily a journalist will depend on sketchy online sources, like social media, for research," he writes.

This process relies on a "delegation of trust:" reporting what others are reporting. Because NPR is a "trusted" source, other news outlets reported its false claim that Gabrielle Giffords had been fatally shot.

When a trusted site or Twitter user publishes something, we assume they did their due diligence by confirming the veracity and authenticity of a claim, and therefore, the news is safe to repeat as fact. Not always so.

However, some more optimistic media professionals believe social media can help verify information and sources. We can follow the digital footprint of social media users.