[oddity]

There are honest reasons why a news outlet might take a strong interest in a group of stories.

A journalist might have become interested in a story early, and his immediate collegues then followed once it started picking up steam, for example. It's a bit like why a university might develop expertise in a new field faster than others.

It's possible that that initial interest came from outside influence of a competitor, but it's also reasonable to suspect that it was an honest skepticism from a journalist. After all, it's not hard to be skeptical of the many startups popping up these days.