Or maybe suing for libel brings a lot of attention so unless it's very bad most companies will opt not to sue, especially if the target is a major news organization.
I was reminded of this recently by a fursuit company issuing a C&D over an accusation most people had forgotten about, for a tweet that was almost half a year old at that point.
24 hours later, the tweet from the target of the C&D has over 7000 retweets and the response from the company has almost 1400 quote retweets yelling at them. Many of the angry responses have as many retweets as the company's tweet.
Hopefully your CTO was.
Most likely, the story is true enough that the companies do not have a case for libel, even if specific details may be wrong, and the companies don't want a lawsuit because that opens then up to discovery proving that the foundational elements of the story are true.