A huge portion of journalism is in fact reporting what people say. An important part of a certain kind of journalism is investigating and reporting on those claims. Sometimes the facts are opaque but claims can be corroborated in other ways. The clue here is the "other experts." If multiple independent sources are making the same claims, that's newsworthy, even if there's no tangible proof.

Also keep in mind this is not an academic article or even an article for tech folks. It's for general population and most folks would be overwhelmed by details about prompts or methodology.