A Plea to Financial Reporters

Why do financial reporters insist on reporting interest rates on complex consumer financial products as if they were meaningful in isolation? To wit, anotherwise good New York Times story http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/business/low-interest-rates-do-little-... reports an increase in credit card interest rates over last year. That figures doubly meaningless. First, interest rates are but one component among many of the cost ofusng a credit card. This is akin to reporting that because A increased, therefore the sum of A+B+C+D+E increased. Unless we know that other factors held constant (fees of various sorts, etc) it doesn't mean much to know what happened to interest rates. And second, interest rates only matter for revolvers (including sloppy payees). That's the majority of card accounts, but it means interest rates just are so important as to be reported in isolation as significant. So tomy financial reporter friends, please stop repeating this logic fallacy.