[oregontim]

Ask yourself:  what do you find objectionable about reporting on those "bigger picture" facts
Context matters - and not just in Covid reporting, but in all kinds of reporting.  Take a hot-button issue like abortion.  What if a media outlet said "Facility X performed 5 abortions today, and it receives federal funding."  And then just ran a similar story day after day (with different numbers of abortions/day).  [The pretty obvious agenda of such reporting would be to halt federal funding for the facility].  I think it would be fair to say that such "reporting" would be factually accurate; however, it doesn't include a lot of context (as in, what other services are provided for by the facility - procedure-wise, counseling-wise, whatever).
When you don't provide context is where you open yourselves up to agenda-reporting.  At least that's my take.

     What you're calling context is what everybody else calls boring. Nobody wants their news stuffed on the inside of a boring retelling of what everybody already knows. Bad weather is news and nobody wants to read about all the normal weather first. Your ideal would kill what's left of the news business.
     Of course context matters is discussions and decisions. And of course, some kind of deeper reporting and investigative journalism absolutely needs context to explain.
     Your abortion example doesn't work because there's no news there anywhere, in any of your permutations. What happens every day at the abortion clinic is not news.  And that clinic's funding is not news. Changes are news. The unexpected is news.  
     For that matter, if the news is that one tournament spread Covid, to add in that 250 others didn't, that would be agenda driven. And — much worse — boring.

[oregontim]

Ask yourself:  what do you find objectionable about reporting on those "bigger picture" facts
Context matters - and not just in Covid reporting, but in all kinds of reporting.  Take a hot-button issue like abortion.  What if a media outlet said "Facility X performed 5 abortions today, and it receives federal funding."  And then just ran a similar story day after day (with different numbers of abortions/day).  [The pretty obvious agenda of such reporting would be to halt federal funding for the facility].  I think it would be fair to say that such "reporting" would be factually accurate; however, it doesn't include a lot of context (as in, what other services are provided for by the facility - procedure-wise, counseling-wise, whatever).
When you don't provide context is where you open yourselves up to agenda-reporting.  At least that's my take.

     What you're calling context is what everybody else calls boring. Nobody wants their news stuffed on the inside of a boring retelling of what everybody already knows. Bad weather is news and nobody wants to read about all the normal weather first. Your ideal would kill what's left of the news business.
     Of course context matters is discussions and decisions. And of course, some kind of deeper reporting and investigative journalism absolutely needs context to explain.
     Your abortion example doesn't work because there's no news there anywhere, in any of your permutations. What happens every day at the abortion clinic is not news.  And that clinic's funding is not news. Changes are news. The unexpected is news.  
     For that matter, if the news is that one tournament spread Covid, to add in that 250 others didn't, that would be agenda driven. And — much worse — boring.