I wouldn't call it a smear campaign.
I'd say that Magpul oopsed, and had to do some hasty QC to fix their injection molding problem.
All the reports I've read since then state that they've made good on the bad mags.
However, it doesn't instill a lot of confidence in some folks, myself included.
Then again, I've been stockpiling new aluminum USGI mags since well before Y2K.