Lone amateur bloggers can (sometimes) be forgiven for getting the facts wrong or riding a meme without verifying sources, but pro blogs and blogs associated with professional publications shouldn’t get off so lightly, in my book.

So for the record: Preston Gralla’s post, on TechWeb’s Networking Pipeline site, VP Cheney To Google: Who’s Your Daddy?, is fiction. Most likely, it’s due to his ignorance of how such imagery is collected.

And while we’re on the topic of corrections: Maureen Dowd is not the New York Times. Dowd is a columnist free to espouse the most outlandish conspiracy theories, while The New York Times has its own editorial voice and news service, and is in the habit of fact checking (recent lapses notwithstanding).