The longer I think about the this the more I am fine with them running the story if it was from an entertainment/humorous standpoint. It’s the faux outrage/faux concerns part of the story thats pathetic.
There's an apocryphal (so, probably untrue) story out there about a couple buried somewhere. The wife's read "Here Lies X, cold as ever" and the husband's read "Here Lies X. Hard at last."