if it had been for defense or some other such thing the media outlet wanted to celebrate it'd have been worded "Our defense apparatus sips only 23% of the country's power!"
tl;dr : accuracy isn't what aligns to personal interests, and journalists who choose to use language like this are (generally speaking) disinterested in accuracy and honesty as top priorities.
"Neutral reporting" presents a false equivalence between different options that seldom are equal.
And of course itself is based on an "idea on the subject": that the role of reporting is to have no values aside from information transmission.
The specific objection is even more bizarre: yes, if it was for something else it would have been worded differently. That's like there being a car accident described as "tragic" and someone objecting that if it was a wedding or a sports win that had happened instead they'd have described them as positive. Sure. Because they're different things.