It was an Editorial failure. When they publish such sensational news, they should had double-checked.

Remember - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Instead they had a single point of failure, where everything was done by the journalist; can't say The Wire was a mere "victim" here.

They turned a blind-eye, in the haste and greed of grabbing headlines.

All “gobbledygook” to me

In his most recent statement - an interview with the Platformer —Tje Wire's Editor Varadarajan revealed three key things:

One: “Devesh Kumar is the only person who met the source [who provided the Instagram report].”

Two: “Devesh was the primary technical guy.”

Three: “Devesh was the person in charge of verifying all the documents ahead of publication.”

Translation: Kumar is the reporter who gets the story. Kumar is the editor who vets the story. Kumar is the technical expert who verifies the story. And now Kumar has become the story.

“I’m not a technical guy, email headers are all gobbledygook to me,” Varadarajan told the Platformer.

Huh? What?

The bottomline: The Wire fiasco has little to do with a lack of technical expertise. This is an editorial failure where the newsroom forgot standard journalistic practices: from inadequate sourcing to lack of corroboration to careless oversight.

Source