I have a pet theory that the articles about HFT are actually placed [0] by big financial interests. I have personally seen a trader at a bank feed a story to a reporter in a different product. That article was pretty fair, but it was on an uncontroversial topic.

I don't think the goal is to be deceptive, but the biases of the source are going to come through. Traders at banks are going to much more charismatic and gregarious than traders at HFT firms so it's not surprising that their story rings louder.

[0] I'm not talking about explicit quid-pro-quo arrangements, but something along the lines of http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html