I only checked you because i thought you might be doin’ a foolin’ and in so doing learned the caveat that the definition specifically includes the press:

A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition.

Not all definitions are as press-specific but the guy who invented the term did implicate them during its coining:

We can thank Norman Mailer for factoid: he used the word in his 1973 book Marilyn (about Marilyn Monroe), and he is believed to be the coiner of the word. In the book, he explains that factoids are “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority”

neat!