To be completely fair, in this case the senior author is designated as the author for correspondence, so I'm not surprised that the Times only contacted the senior author. The author contribution statement also suggests that the co-lead authors and the senior author performed the bulk of the work, so it's not just the case of the PI attaching his name to the paper and clicking submit.

But I agree that journalists in particular and everyone else in general need to do a better job of highlighting lead authors in addition to or instead of senior authors since they are usually at an earlier career stage that would benefit from the publicity.