Factoid

While it has come to mean "a small fact" or "snippet of the information", the word "factoid" (coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe) originally had a different and more subtle meaning. The original meaning was a wholly spurious "fact" invented to create or prolong public exposure or to manipulate public opinion. Mailer himself described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper".