The news biz has its own version of SEO, keyed mainly off of article titles but also to a lesser extent off of image titles. Both of those are selected by the editor, not the reporter. The main difference is that they aren't optimizing for search engines.

There were tons of cases of this weird "article/photo title is trying way too hard to spin this story while the text is pretty neutral and unbiased" during election season.

It also shows up in the tendency to insert the prefix "Commentary:" in the title of any article noting any negative facts about a certain particular country. The WSJ is particularly hilarious in this respect.