Probably just good old fashioned human error, in this case. The WSJ really did report on this story, including on the contingency agreement; I’d bet that the Futurism article was mostly written using the WaPo article (which is pretty similar to the WSJ article); but at the last minute, the writer decided they liked the WSJ reporting better and switched the credit without realizing they also needed to switch the link.
Probably just good old fashioned human error, in this case. The WSJ really did report on this story, including on the contingency agreement; I’d bet that the Futurism article was mostly written using the WaPo article (which is pretty similar to the WSJ article); but at the last minute, the writer decided they liked the WSJ reporting better and switched the credit without realizing they also needed to switch the link.