I believe that as well. After everyone picked up on Martin Ziegler’s somewhat hysterical story & rewrote it without question, David Conn went out and established the truth, which was somewhat less newsworthy.
This is what many journalists do; pick up on a word or phrase taken out of context or twist something to their own version of the truth. Others then pick up on this and adapt it for their own ends. When the same story is in 6 or 7 different papers, people assume it’s true because every journalist has been briefed by a source. Yet mostly it’s because they’ve just copied and embellished one journalist’s story, which may not in itself be true.