jcjeant,
I respectfully disagree with your second reading and criticisms of the BEA and their response to this news article. They made somethings crystal clear:
1. They and they alone have the responsibility to release information concerning the AF447 investigation.
2. The BEA reserves the right to confirm information published from an external source as being accurate and true.
3. The BEA investigation has not reached the stage of determining cause of the accident.
and,
4. Articles, such as this one, does the families of those who perished no good and could cause harm as it is not information either released or concurred by the BEA.
So, by not concurring or denying as you say, the article and its content is null and void, that is to say, not authoritative as no conclusions have yet been reached.
The BEA is doing exactly what the French Government has chartered it to do, investigate the accident, establish factual information, take the factual information derived and establish factual cause/causes, probable cause/causes, and those causes that cannot be determined from all the developed data. Once in a while they get sidetracked by being required to remind the public as to the source of accurate information, that source is the BEA.