"Nothing in the article explains why it is a bad thing that x. Which seems to be a logical pre-requisite to declaring it to be 'worse than you think'"

It's quite simple: Some things you have to accept as a given, it's a shared social norm. No one will bother to write a paragraph why rape is bad each time an article about rape is written, no one will bother to write a paragraph why police brutality is bad each time an article about police brutality is written and no one will bother to explain why "economic inequality" (i.e. some people starve while others live in luxury) is bad. It would be cumbersome and tiring for most readers for the sake of a tiny minority to write articles in the style you seem to prefer.