This situation has a really simple solution.

Any company of ethics and integrity who finds itself in a situation like this will immediately post to clarify the situation if there's a misunderstanding, or own up to the situation and post a mea culpa if in fact it turns out there's been an error. I like to be optimistic and openminded, but in this case, it's hard to imagine a scenario where it's a simple oversight, so either an explanation or acknowledgement of the error would go a long way.

If it were my company, I'd also be concerned about making sure my advertisers were happy since presumably some of them made the decision to advertise based on a representation of audited circulation that wasn't audited.

I hope there can be a good outcome to this situation, and people just don't make it into drama.