That fraud committed under cover of "news", "journalism", or other forms of reporting, remains fraud.
Here committed by a "citizen journalist", interpreting the term very broadly.
There's the Infowars / Alex (nutjob) Jones / Pizzagate case as well, where, under threat of a lawsuit, Jones has tried to walk back earlier reporting.
(There's another Alex S. Jones, a serious journalist, associated with the Shorenstein Center. Who I strongly suspect curses his, or Nutjob's, parents, on a fairly regular basis. One of the rather more pronounced, ironic, and tragic cases of identity confusion.)
You're mixing apples and oranges here. There's a difference between committing fraud to get a true story and printing something the government decides isn't true.
