This may be how the first news of ETI will be presented to the world, by someone leaking it before the scientists are ready.

There is a real life example of this: In 1997, the SETI Institute had detected what looked like an artificial signal that did not seem to correspond with anything from humanity. As they were checking and rechecking the data, a minor person on the staff had called his wife to tell her about the potential discovery, and within hours the news had spread like the proverbial wildfire. It turned out the signal was from the SOHO satellite, if I recall correctly, but you see my point.

And now that I remember, the famous Mars meteorite nanofossils of 1996 first came to light from the mouth of the mistress of a senator who told her about the discovery!