No matter what their reasons for writing viruses, they add something important to our knowledge base. Those guys contribute absolutely nothing to the state of the art in virus technology. The fact you know how to use an antivirus program doesn't make you an antivirus expert, either. It depends entirely on your perspective. Some folks out there consider a worldwide alert absolutely necessary if even one person on the planet can get hurt by something.
Reporters help to spread the word in such cases.
Personally, I think virus scares do a lot of harm. A lot of harm. You've written before about many people who claim to be virus experts but who actually know very little. You seem to be very leary of anti-virus software companies. They underplay the problem of false alarms so their products look good.