No, it was preventative to hinder people to jump to false conclusions while there cannot be definite certainty about it.

I do condemn this lie and believe people had a right to know that it is a possibility. But the condition for that would be that people are able to restrain themselves to not act on suspicions. This was not fully the case.

But even with that they should have come clean with their suspicions and adapt them as further evidence surfaced.

In their defense, most members of the mainstream media are so scientifically ignorant that they probably don't even understand the difference between those theories.

Perhaps they should have somebody on their team who isn't scientifically ignorant explain things to them before they start spewing crap to millions of people?

As long as advertisers will pay to show up between segments, there's no real incentive to.

News exists to make money, and a faster but less accurate story is more profitable

lol - you think the mainstream media cares one whit about reporting facts? I guess you are in the 20% that still trust them?