You've got a strong argument to say "the reporter should do a little bit more work to put these numbers in context" but the reporter has an equally strong argum

You've got a strong argument to say "the reporter should do a little bit more work to put these numbers in context" but the reporter has an equally strong argument for "This is a news wire, not a journal. I just report today's news as succinctly as possible, it's the readers responsibility to read further and put this stuff in context if that's really important". As a side note though, I like the Economist because they tend to do what you're talking about - put things in context.