My reading of GP disappointed post was that they were accusing them of the latter; which is, in my opinion, underserved here.

There's a difference, but I don't really see the "world" of difference. They both seem like fundamentally irresponsible journalism. Case (a) should never happen because there's an assumption of due diligence, and case (b) should never happen because there's an assumption of truth-seeking. Not doing due diligence is pretty close to ignoring (or at the very least not caring about) the truth.

In the world we’re living in, with the incentives of modern journalism being what they are (and the state of gaming media industry specifically), I’m willing to cut more slack to people writing about things outside their comfort zone.

But in many places there's no need to get the members to authorize the strike, the union itself holds that power (I am at least 99% sure that's the case in Germany and France, at the very least.)

You don’t need a vote for „Warnstreik” (warning strike), which frequently is enough to make a point, which makes the „real”/open-ended strikes much more rare than otherwise.

AFAICT all strikes I’ve ever seen happen here (the plethora of different train and airport unions) were technically warning strikes and not „real” ones; but they were enough to get the unions their wins.