No assumptions, those same newspapers printed corrections and apologies. Several newspapers and news sources covered these errors, most crowing over lazy journalists at rival publications lifting 'facts' from wikipedia without verifying them. The vicious circle described is not only possible, I'd lay good money that there are already many instances of wikipedia articles citing sources which themselves lifted those 'facts' from the wikipedia articles. It's an issue which would need to be dealt with at the very top of the wikipedia hierarchy and somehow I don't foresee them deciding to decree that every single citation and fact be re-verified. They'd rather someone else shoulder the responsibility.    