The story came from chat room to newsroom to correction. In Introduction to Journalism class at Illinois, students learn “The essence of journalism is a discipline of verification” (from “The Elements of Journalism” by Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel).
The discipline includes the practice of doing one’s own, original reporting, and that would include tracking down the source of the information to judge the veracity of the report. The link above shows the Twitter route of the reports.