I mean, him stating a name and his motivations and verifying that it was indeed this man and those were his motives are two different things.
I like journalism that verifies statements. Is there a man by that name and is he deceased? If the answer to those questions had been "no", it would have been an entirely different story.
I mean, it's absolutely petty, yes. OTOH, while it worded as being aimed at EU users spending a short while outside of the US, it's very clearly aimed at non-EU citizens trying to also profit from the EU ruling.
Example: if a US citizen takes a weeklong trip to Italy, they now have access to third-party stores, but Apple basically makes them unusable as soon as they're stateside. Can't have nice things.