It actually means a lot. Hersh is basing the entire story off one anonymous source. For such a serious implication, he’s unable to even do due diligence on basic verifiable facts. That buries the lede on how much verification he competently did for his source.
>>reduce+(OP)
It doesn't really. It's the kind of thing that could slip by fact checkers at plenty of publications and result in a fairly innocuous correction.
>>kubect+se
A single mistake, maybe. An entire paragraph where every single sentence consists of a separate claim that is either outright wrong or unsupported by any evidence? Well, maybe it is par for the course for modern journalism after all.