Atrios points to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune article pointing out a dubious story on the conservative Minnesota-based blog Powerline, and editorialises with a statement that really ought to be self-evident by now. But there cannot be enough repetition of this point:

… blogs are not “self-correcting” — you actually have to, you know, make corrections. And, especially if you operate a comment-free blog, your errors are not necessarily going to be pointed out to the rest of the world. And, more importantly, when you do stuff which is journalism-like, instead of pundit-like — that is, passing along information from sources, then there’s a wee bit of obligation to try to verify that information.

Conservative bloggers engage in faith-based blogging. They say the “blogosphere is self-correcting!” and this absolves them from any responsibility to actually acknowledge or correct their errors. …

I’m not sure this is really just a partisan question that applies to American conservatives — everybody believing the hype about the mystical powers of the blogging medium should bear this in mind.