This piece [see comments; actually a press release] from Yahoo News has a lede that in some journalistic circles would be considered most irresponsible in its syntax:

BOSTON, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Pulitzer-prize winner Sylvia Nasar (“A Beautiful Mind”) defamed world renowned Harvard mathematics professor Dr. Shing-Tung Yau, in an article about a noteworthy mathematical proof in The New Yorker magazine entitled “Manifold Destiny” (August 28, 2006), according to a letter written by Dr. Yau’s attorney, Howard M. Cooper of Todd & Weld LLP of Boston. In the letter, Dr. Yau has demanded that The New Yorker and Nasar make a prominent correction of the errors in the article, and apologize for an insulting illustration that accompanied it.

Let’s not put the declarative cart before the reportorial horse, shall we? And, given recent events, may we decide for ourselves if an illustration is insulting? In any case, the piece concludes,

The allegations made in the letter will be discussed in detail in a webcast open to all interested parties scheduled for Noon EDT, Wednesday, September 20, 2006. Log in information will be posted on www.doctoryau.com. The letter sent to The New Yorker is available at his website.

Update: Via Romanesko, an actual journalistic account of the matter (or antimatter) in the Boston Herald, with Remnick’s comment:

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, said yesterday he had only recently received Cooper’s letter, but the magazine “painstakingly checked the facts” in the Aug. 28 article “as we do with all pieces in The New Yorker.”
“I would have assumed that Professor Yau and his attorney would have waited for a full response to their letter before forwarding it to the press,” Remnick said.

Further update: The Boston Herald‘s Jesse Noyes follows up with a story headed “New Yorker: Math Prof’s Charges Don’t Add Up.” An excerpt:

Cooper’s letter said that the article’s authors, Pulitzer Prize-winner Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, knowingly defamed Yau and never gave him a chance to respond to charges in the story.
But The New Yorker said the article was the result of four months of reporting and hours of meticulous fact-checking. The authors spent over 20 hours interviewing Yau, conducted approximately 100 other interviews with people in Yau’s field and even traveled to China to research the story.

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Math Is Hard