PHP Fatal error

PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function get_error_string() on a non-object in /var/www/queer/sites/all/modules/feedapi/parser_simplepie/simplepie.inc on line 1787

This breaks the cron run. It incorrectly reports as a timeout error after only a few seconds: "Cron run exceeded the time limit and was aborted."

Quick and dirty solution was to comment out the following in simplepie.inc (version 1.1.3):

			// We have an error, just set SimplePie::error to it and quit
			$this->error = sprintf('XML error: %s at line %d, column %d', $parser->get_error_string(), $parser->get_current_line(), $parser->get_current_column());
			SimplePie_Misc::error($this->error, E_USER_NOTICE, __FILE__, __LINE__);
			return false;