I think people here are pissed at Cathy, not because of the rationale behind her piece, which is that there are journalistic standards and journalistic publications should adhere to them, but because of the nature of the piece she was criticizing. I'm seeing two lines of criticism of her, and neither are fair: 1) The story was "truthy," ie, it seemed like it could be true, and certainly there is a story out there like it that is true, so Cathy was out of line to criticize the process that led to its publication. 2) Cathy was in the wrong because she said the story was false. This is not fair because that's not what Cathy was saying. She was saying given her analysis of the information she had about the story, she doubted it was true. But she acknowledged it could still be true. Indeed, the story does appear to be an illustration of attempting to be first, and eschewing journalistic standards to be first even if it may risk not being right. If the Columbus Dispatch had waited until there was an arrest, or had otherwise adhered to regular standards, no one would have had this conversation. And, if Cathy had written a piece in October of 2020 criticizing shoddy journalism that went into a piece about Hunter Biden's laptop, no one here would have attacked her for it in the comments, even if the story in the piece might have turned out to be true.