I would in general agree with you, but having read through the journal paper: I think the fraction of general audience newspaper readers who could actually read that paper is very low. I come from a science background, spent time dabbling in time and frequency measurement enough to understand some of the concepts, and still found it a painful slog. (I am very much not a physicist!)

I still think it's the right practice for newspapers to always link to the primary source, but in this particular case I understand why they might make an editorial decision not to.