Perhaps I'm mistaken...but in an ideal forum, comments should be linked to the specific content of the article in question. While I agree that consolidating comments may be appropriate for scientific articles...I believe it's less suitable for ongoing news stories. As new information emerges, comments should be able to address the latest developments accordingly.
You're right in principle, but I'm not sure there's any SNI* that isn't completely dwarfed by the top-level story. In that case we'd just get the same discussion split across several threads with no merit to keeping them separate.