Most journalists are ex. English majors (or some other non-technical degree). I would not expect any (even the supposed tech. journalists) to understand the technology they report upon to the level that us here on HN understand that same technology.
Their job is to write coherent articles that gather views, not truly understand what it is they are writing about. That's why the Gell-Mann Amnesia [1] aspect so often crops up for any technical article (hint, it also crops up for every article, but we don't recognize the mistakes the journalist makes in the articles where we don't have the underlying knowledge to recognize the mistakes).
I’m my experience most posters on HN are don’t under technology either. So they both don’t understand people or technology putting them two steps behind a journalist.
Journalists are people, like everyone else, and most people are bad at their jobs.
Plus, what even is the job? For most journalists out there, it's just writing something that draws ad impressions and clicks.
The percentage of journalists that work for outlets where the content itself is the cash source is very small (NYTimes, probably a bunch of other paid subscriptions). And even the NYTimes isn't above clickbait.
Their job is to write coherent articles that gather views, not truly understand what it is they are writing about. That's why the Gell-Mann Amnesia [1] aspect so often crops up for any technical article (hint, it also crops up for every article, but we don't recognize the mistakes the journalist makes in the articles where we don't have the underlying knowledge to recognize the mistakes).
[1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/