They published the story 4 hours after the incident happened. That's nowhere near enough time for SpaceX to respond, as such, it is indeed on the journalist in

They published the story 4 hours after the incident happened. That's nowhere near enough time for SpaceX to respond, as such, it is indeed on the journalist in my opinion. Not only is it unlikely that the author found out immediately as it happened, it's unlikely that SpaceX could get a statement ready in 2 maybe 3 hours (assuming an hour total between author seeing this info and a SpaceX rep seeing his email about it), while also leaving the author time to write the article.