After their stock crashed there was a small window of time where the tech crowd had concluded the claim is bullshit but the stock didn't go back up.
Checked out their financials and that seemed fine so stuck money in it and waited for it to recover
A story or rumour affecting the short term price of a company stock, might leave little recourse to the company, as that price can return back to what it was relatively quickly. There would have been some reputation damage, but I wouldn't weigh stock price to be a good measure of that.
If the company was maybe in the middle of raising funds, say bonds from the market, or using additional shares; they would have stronger case if the false story hindered such find raising.
A company is often not affected by short-term fluctuations in its external "value".
If in the other hand, there's an investor who was adversely affected by such news, the stock price directly affects them. Perhaps they would have a stronger case.
This is my opinion based on my intuition.
> Statements made in a good faith and reasonable belief that they were true are generally treated the same as true statements; however, the court may inquire into the reasonableness of the belief. The degree of care expected will vary with the nature of the defendant: an ordinary person might safely rely on a single newspaper report, while the newspaper would be expected to carefully check multiple sources.
However if the press demonstrates that they followed reasonable journalistic practices and weren’t blatantly lying, they’d be fine.