That seemed like irresponsible speculation on Vanity Fair's part to me.
The root cause was a captain who mistakenly reacted off of 12 hour old data and ignored another source of data that contradicted it. Pretty surprising given the lengths the article goes through to impress upon the reader how "safety conscious" he was.
It is speculation, but it is also relevant. Commercial shipping may be uniquely prone to accidents caused by profit-driven decisions, as discussed in Perrow's Normal Accidents book.
The article probably emphasises the captain's safety consciousnes to prevent people from "blaming the operator", which is an instinctual and often wrong conclusion to jump to.
The NTSB report says: Performance. The chief mate's performance evaluations were consistently positive. His evaluation from June 2015 stated that he was “passionate” about his work and “an excellent instructor for the inexperienced.”
I don't believe it does place the blame fully on the captain, where did you see that?
The report conclusions mention several events and dozens of contributing factors.
If you want to think in terms of blame, which is not helpful to avoid future accidents nor for nurturing a safety culture, the report "blames" the ship owner, captain, crew, National Hurricane Center and the coast guard...
Some actions of the captain were a contributing factor, notably bridge resource management/communication.
"Coast Guard investigators virtually placed all of the blame on Michael Davidson, the El Faro's captain. Davidson underestimated the strength of the storm and the ship's ability to ride it out. He did not take enough measures to evade the storm, even though most of his crew raised concerns about the increase in strength of the storm. Investigators had stated that if Davidson had survived the storm, his actions would have been grounds for the Coast Guard to revoke his captain's license."
The root cause was a captain who mistakenly reacted off of 12 hour old data and ignored another source of data that contradicted it. Pretty surprising given the lengths the article goes through to impress upon the reader how "safety conscious" he was.