News copy is a bit different than real writing.
I have a book here called the "Broadcast News Handbook" (and I'll grant you it's a bit different from print journalism but I imagine this aspect would be similar.
So sayeth the Broadcast News Handbook
"Don't use more than one tense in the same sentence for example, you wouldn't write 'Police arrest a Carrville man and charged him with arson.' You place both verbs in the past tense, but your best bet is to use the present tense with both words (unless the arrest happened some time ago and we're updating the story)."
I hope that helps.