Hopefully religious Americans can be honest enough to recognize that “faith promoting rumors” are a foundation of sand for our faith in God and recognize that how we come to faith is important for determining the genuineness of that faith, and thus its durability in the face of life’s challenges.

Ontological truth is something that’s appropriate to say. You see this a lot when it comes to religious language. (God is not literally powerful because he’s greater than what the term describes; but it’s still appropriate to call him powerful.) “Artistic truth” might also fall under this category. Literature pulls on this kind of truth, and often does it quite well – think about talking about whether a certain theme is “true.” Journalism can do this, too, but you have to be very careful to present it as something other than literal truth; an imagined conversation, a detail off how the situation might have unrolled when we have incomplete information, etc. The problem is when people don’t distinguish between them.

I suspect you might also have had this in mind: the kinds of incentives motivating Mike Daisy are disturbingly similar to those which motivate many evangelicals when they tell stories to another that seem to affirm the faith and glorify God (stories, e.g., about divine guidance, changed lives, answered prayer, or even miracles and healing). There’s little expectation of hard headed fact checking when one evangelical testifies to others about such events. At least since the time when unblessed Thomas asked the risen Jesus for proof, Christians seems to feel pressure against even desiring confirming evidence, much less asking for it, much less still demanding it.