Nick Bradbury makes a good observation – bloggers are taking the path of mainstream media to get more readers:
Many of us in the geekosphere have a low opinion of the “mainstream media,” but we bloggers suffer from the same faults that we saddle the MSM with.
We shoot from the hip without checking our sources, do little research to back up our claims, create sensationalistic titles for our posts, and generally do everything that the MSM does to increase readership.
But when a blog with a large audience makes a false claim, the potential for harm is great enough that fact-checking should be more of a priority.