Onion
Bit of paranoia here I feel. Haven't seen this story before now, but then don't read your local papers. The story just seems one of the very day yarns that reporters of the local rags churn out. Doesn't seem like anything personal, and it reads that everyone did all that was reasonably possible.
I personally don't think NCL has any better or worse treatment. I'm sure that if a reporter got an insight into a worthwhile human angle on the Easy NCL -ALC then it would be published.
To add further substance to this it's only a couple of weeks since the the Newcastle journal ran a ludicrous front page headline about a near miss at NCL when a light aircraft strayed onto the runway, when in fact the Easy was about 3 -4 miles on the ILS and did a standard go around. The paper recieved some serious flack from the head of the ATC as to their editorial.