Freedom of expression and truth

The health care debate has given rise to a number of spurious claims, as sides passionately cling to their views.
The most infamous certainly was Sarah Palin's "death panels" assertion. Jon Stewart did an artful job taking on another seller of that spin on the proposed legislation.
The White House got into an interesting kerfuffle over an effort to get people to root out "fishy" information that they could then try to debunk. The plan was a pretty commonplace blogosphere approach. The theory goes: the more eyes watching facts and working on verifying them, the more likely truth will have a chance to emerge.
But what if those eyes are being asked to watch by the government? What does that do to your constitutionally protected freedoms? Was the White House asking people to rat out their friends and family, a la McCarthyism? Or trying to get real answers out into the public sphere in response to flat-out lies? Dig around for updates to this story. What did the administration decide to do?