The reporter can only relay what is learned from people who claim to have first hand knowledge.
If that information is inaccurate, that is not necessarily the reporter's fault, nor is the reporter lying.
The woman's story is, when you examine what we have told, very strange.
Is she lying? Not necessarily.
When I am told that a woman put her two kids on the roof of a car that had already been swamped by waves, that the kids unsurprisingly were swept away by another wave, that the mother went looking for help rather than go in after them, that she was denied help and decided to sit on a doorstep all night rather than go in after them, well - I feel like I need more details before I say that someone definitely refused a desperate woman help. Especially when I learn that the man being accused was sheltering various neighbors from the storm.
If the account in this story is true, the man who turned her and her children away is beneath contempt.