Does this qualify as a report?

There's no source, not even an anonymous source. Not "a front-office executive with knowledge of the situation" or "a source within Major League Baseball" or even "someone highly familiar with Bud Selig's hair".

There's just Bill Madden, passing along the knowledge that Major League Baseball will uphold the San Francisco Giants' claim to territorial rights in San Jose, thus keeping the Oakland Athletics from moving there. Bill Madden:

Unfortunately, the "Moneyball" film came up empty with the Academy Award voters, and the same fate beckons for Beane and Oakland A’s owners Lew Wolff and John Fisher in their determined effort to move to a new stadium in Hi-Tech haven. The latter prospect, in which, for a variety of reasons, MLB is going to uphold the San Francisco Giants’ territorial rights in San Jose, will be especially disheartening for Beane.

If this really happens -- and again, this hardly seems an authoritative report but Madden has been in the business for a long time and presumably has some excellent sources -- it's not exactly the end of the world. Yes, the A's will explore other sites. But Portland and Las Vegas and San Antonio aren't exactly screaming for Major League Baseball and the Yankees and Mets won't let the A's move to Brooklyn or New Jersey. It's really hard to win in a stadium like the Coliseum ... but it's hard to win where the Rays play, too, and yet somehow they've been doing it.

This is really a shame, though. Generally speaking, Major League Baseball should allow franchises to follow the people and the money. Forcing the A's to remain where they are is good for nobody except the Giants.