I know journalists (or web-wannabe-journalists) to be clueless, but this one is too much for me to stand.

Man, the web is filled with FUD, clueless stories, wonders, crap and blogs. This time, it's an unfounded claim that Perl is insecure, tomorrow it's a story that now we have PUGS, perl6 will be out before Christmas, and yesterday it was about nanobots taking over.

Ignore it. Noone cares now, and by tomorrow, everyone will have forgotten it because tomorrow it will be .NET who will cause the sky to collapse.

How can we respond to such attacks against our language and community?

An attack against our language and community? Get a life. This isn't Risk.