The ballroom discussion isn't even part of the topic here, the point is that an article with clear conflict of interest didn't note the conflict of interest, and didn't do a correction until a 3rd party basically forced them to. And it isn't a one-off, it's now a pattern.

This shows that the organization is getting rotten from the inside, otherwise stuff like this is flagged up front, if the journalists and editors there have any journalistic integrity left in them.