The vast, vast major of journalists are writers, not technical people. They are taught to look at the facts and report them as accurately as possible. But there's a limit to how they can interpret the details when the facts are technical details beyond their training and real knowledge. If the industry changes rapidly and is difficult for practitioners to keep up, what chance does a journalist have when they spent more time in bars than in a STEM class in college?
Cops and journalists aren't that different in some respects. Typical street cop, or even typical Fed, is not trained in anything technical like computers or software. So unless they go get additional training, they're only plugging numbers into a spreadsheet.
