It was a newspaper that investigated & reported this info.
Well, of course. Newspapers don’t really specialize in reporting what happened. They are only interested in persuading you how you should think about things. In this case, the newspaper was very interested in persuading everyone that the passenger is the business dispute with United “had it coming” because he had been a scumbag in the past.
That’s what they teach in J-school. Simply focusing on what happened would be ... boring.