Why should they have to get a court order when the party in custody said they have the data? Unless they don't actually have the data and they're hiding behind the court.

Iron Mountain doesn't have it in the PBS station's account, it's in OSS's account. Instead of taking on the liability of deciding whether PBS should really have the data or if they're mistaken or even fraudulent, Iron Mountain is waiting for the court to sort that out.

Their contract said that they had 30 days to get the data when OSS went bust. Instead, IM cut them off immediately. They need the court order to make IM comply with existing contracts.

Holy reading comprehension and assumption creep! Nobody said that it was OK. But losing data and losing access to the data is clearly not the same thing. That’s why this clickbait headline decided to say the former instead of the latter, because it sounds worse. Read the article.

Because it's not their customer, the defunct company is.

If you had an account with them, how would you feel if some unknown third party could call them up and go "Uh hello you have my data give me access plz trust me bro"

How unknown is a well known PBS affiliate?