In which concerns publishability, it depends upon the journal policies regarding pre-prints and media coverage. However, this is not a legal issue - there is nothing illegal about the situation you have described.
In the case of IEEE you can see here that they allow authors to share their work anywhere.
Prior to submission to an IEEE publication
Authors may post their article anywhere at any time, including on preprint servers such as arXiv.org. This does not count as a prior publication.
Caveat: please read the whole content of the link to be aware of the full policy. They ask you to use a disclaimer that the work was submitted to IEEE:
The following text should be included on the first page of the submitted article when it first is posted in any of the above outlets: “This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.”