It's not the worst mistake a journo could make. "Traps" doesn't inherently make sense - and it's confusing that we also use "arrested landing", "CATOBAR" and "STOBAR", which themselves are odd because the B for "but" is meaningless* - while at least "flaps" is an aviation term.
When we mangle the language we can't blame people for getting it wrong.
* It should be "catapult take off AND arrested recovery" because there is no opposition between the two, and arrested recovery does not qualify catapult take-off.