The cynic in me whispers that the alphabet media were told what really happened, but said, wait a minute... We can milk this. Here's the narrative for the next few days...
Being a conspiracy theorist doesn’t make you wrong, it means you believe that the likely motivations or interests of various parties are likely the actual cause of the observed behavior, even when there is no proof.
Here, news outlets probably would have been motivated to carry the “hope” story even if they knew it was false, because money. A conspiracy theorist would believe that because the news outlets probably would have been so motivated, then they probably actually were so motivated.