No, that's also incorrect, in regards to food safety. Many coffee chains and fast food restaurants still serve coffee at the same temperature McDonalds did or well above the burning temperature specified in the litigation. Starbucks and Dunkin Doughnuts both do, and I believe this was covered in the HBO documentary. They just haven't been sued enough. Ironic.
It wasn't the QC guy "spilling the beans" any elementary school nurse could likely tell you what temperature you are going to experience a burn at. It was the legal team arguing the case that showcased the recklessness in that combined decision (Messaging between corporate and QC discovery) and the complete disregard for consumer safety after X amount of burns had happened.
That despite the amount of money the company had already paid out, they were not willing to consider a change. That's what prompted the enormous punitive damage sum by the jury, to coerce the company to change it's policy.
In this case, the burden of proof is libel.
https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/libel
Any news venue from CNN to the enquirer would definitely be granted a grace period to "correct" their reporting. However, this continued onwards past the full video release. To CNN's credit, it wasn't their 'journalists' producing content, it was on the commentary panels they aired who did nothing but condemn this minor and his community and which re-played on 24 hour segments. I am unable to find a retraction by CNN in print or video, maybe you can? The closest thing to it was a segment by Chris Cuomo where HE "doesn't blame the kids" but the staff, parents, other kids were to blame more or less through not walking away while waiting for their bus. Again, no official retraction from CNN that the minor wasn't a "racist teen confronting a native American man in his maga hat". Instead of retracting, they went on to talk about how this is all Trumps fault. A point that Linwood will point to along with their history especially during the 2016 and post 2016 news cycle as being "malicious".
I could be wrong, but I think I read that 81 different libel lawsuits are going to be filed or maybe that's subpoenas for Trumps people? Either case, a lot of people are going to be sued over this. The nail in the coffin for the larger media venues is going to be the smaller fish without the huge corporate legal teams being sued, whose testimony where they made threats against these minors will likely be used in the larger testimonial bodies against venues like CNN, Wapo, etc. The smaller fish aren't journalists, these were people making assumptions based off their reporting and like I said it will be damning. They are getting their news from these sources and the likely hood is certain that their testimony will be used in larger lawsuits to prove extent of damages in both punitive and restitutive purposes. As Uncle Ben used to say.....