Don't feel too bad.. .it's easy to be taken in, and I've been taken in on a few in my time. I've gotten cynical and jaded enough that it's not too common any more; but if you hunt you'll find a thread I started several months ago about studying pollutants on poor people, where I took the claim of the news articles at face value and had it (correctly) pointed out to me that I was misrepresenting the reality.
It happens to the best of us... and it's happend to me as well (so there's both ends of that spectrum)