Gee, I always thought it was good reporting.
Seriously, I'm not sure the reporter is responsible for the response. It
seems to me that we put the source material forward with the minimum of
distortion and step back, go to the next story, whatever. The world is a
messy place; the reporter's job is to report. There are plenty of outside
forces at work (+ and -), of course, but it would seem that attending to
such things as accuracy, representativeness, etc. would minimize
entaglement in the latest moralisms.