Unfortunately I don't think this is the first time he has been socially manipulated in this way. Mr Krebs does seem to have a habit of only getting the details from one side of things and only writing things from that side of the story. Perhaps due to the nature of some of his investigations.

Everyone has weaknesses to being socially manipulated. One way to mitigate this is to open a dialog with "the other side" to check and seek out inconsistencies. Perhaps not revealing everything in your exposé story or leaving the veracity of it somewhat ambiguous until things develop further. This could weaken the impact of your initial story. Dialog is probably not easy when the other party is undoubtably criminal and you can get blocked from reaching the right people. In this case, the accusations were against a corporation. They can be good or bad, but ultimately legal processes will reveal things.

I do think Mr Krebs has upped his game in recent years and enjoy reading his stories, but I read them like fiction rather than actual verified facts.