Everyone knows that the information contained in the magazines sold near supermarket checkout lines is generally unsubstantiated at best and flat-out false at worse. But which tabloids are the most dishonest?

OK! Magazine features a bright and shiny new cover this week that trumpets the shocking news that pop starlet Britney Spears and her sister Jamie-Lynn Spears are planning a double wedding! OMG! Turns out that it’s not true. OMG

Look, we know that tabloid magazines lie. That’s a given. Even their most ardent fans don’t actually, deep down believe the stuff they’re reading. But there are some standards that should be kept. Standards like, I don’t know, the English language. That’s why this Gossip Cop story about OK! Magazine (they of the similarly ridiculous Jennifer Aniston pregnancy report) and their cover touting a “confirmed” pregnancy for Jessica Simpson is so insulting. The word “confirmed” kind of means something.

Across the magazine world ad pages are down 28 percent with no increase in sight. But in the dog-eat-dog world of 2009 ad sales, some publishers are pulling out their dirtiest tricks to actually get ad sales up.

In today’s cutthroat media environment, stories break fast and spoil faster. It doesn’t take long to go from big news to scraps of news to contrary opinions that seem cooked up for shock value. News Decay charts the strange and rapid declines wrought by the 24-hour news cycle.