I would agree that governments, the media and authority figures can be corrupt and hide facts, or outright lie. I am in agreement with you that it is important to remain open-minded until the facts are revealed, unfortunately those facts are often hidden or skewed by governments, the media (depending on the source) and authority figures.
Just because you are open to conspiracy theories doesn't make you crazy, they are after all theories, and there may/may not be truth to them but there has to be some criteria for determining their validity. Personally, I like the scientific method of a hypothesis, producing data and then a conclusion. And I prefer my data to come from an expert in the field, not a political pundit, CEO or a Washington think tank.
I agree with you in theory, but in practice it can be so hard to tell whether or not the supposedly objective evaluator is biased toward picking selected facts to 'prove' that the conspiracy didn't happen, or did happen but happened a certain way, and so on.
Case in point: The JFK assassination. 61% of Americans in 2013 believed JFK was assassinated by someone else in addition to the 'lone gunman', Oswald. 13% believe it was the Mafia, and other culprits receive lower percentages of identification. (Gallup,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx )
This, along with the Moon Landing Hoax Theory, is the mother of all conspiracy theories, and yet it receives widespread credence. This doesn't mean it has legitimate credence, just that many people find the established story lacking in conviction.
The thing is, with something as big as the JFK assassination, the interests involved in hiding the truth or inventing conspiracies are too big for us to ever be able to say "The guy who wrote this book is telling the truth and not lying for sales because of xyz". He might be lying for sales; on the other hand, the established story might be full of lies because the truth is too awful to be allowed to come out. How can we ever really know the truth?
I went to Dallas some years ago to see the Grassy Knoll, Texas Book Depository, and so on. While there, I ran across an older gentleman who declared that he was there on the day of the assassination (he kindly produced pictures of a little boy supposedly himself standing near the front of the line of people as JFK rode by) and he told us the straight line story, except that he swore up and down that there was more than one shooter; he himself couldn't say where the other shooter was or who he was. Speaking of the trees on the Grassy Knoll, he said, "Everyone always talks about those trees; let me tell you, I was there and those trees were exactly the same then as they are today". We went and looked at the official pictures, and sure enough, he was right. Maybe he was there that day... Or maybe not...
The point is that the truth is probably impossible to determine; pick your own version because one is as likely as another. I personally like the theory that LBJ was behind it because I've never liked LBJ, and the way he glowered at Kennedy in the pictures makes him look like a good Macbeth. I don't believe it, but I'd like it to be true...