If it's all lies, what's the motive? Politicians/government officials don't usually lie without some sort of expectation of benefit.
The proposed CyberSecurity Act of 2009 would allow the president to designate a private network (such as a SCADA system) as critical, and in the case of a declared emergency, shut it off from the Internet.
As you can imagine, there is resistance to this from multiple parties, including those industries who fear additional government regulation and also privacy and anti-censorship advocates who fear "scope creep" in the legislation.
As they say, nature abhors a vacuum, and Congresscritters see a piece of important infrastructure that's not under their control. Believing their jobs are important, they believe that this lack of regulation is a danger.
Journalists see the concern of the Congresscritters, and hey, these are community leaders: there must be something to this, so lets do some research and see what we can find -- but we're writing for the public, we've got to present it in a compelling fashion.
So all this takes is a a bunch of people who are acting according to their own world view, following whatever natural incentives they have.
However, don't forget the influence of the lobbyists hired by the security industry. Additionally, "non-profit" organizations involved with information security that see a potential cybersecurity boom as beneficial to their membership and influence in the field.