Al-Arabiyya begins to distance itself from its fabricated documents

"First, we did clarify that these documents were obtained from opposition sources; as professional journalists, we obviously knew that this naturally means that they (our sources) may have been selective in what they chose to share with us.  Then, we did mention upfront that our sources declined to inform us how they managed to obtained these highly confidential files."  If you have all these caveats, should you not as an (un)professional outfit have refrained from publishing them?