Hacker is someone that finds a way to use a thing out side of the designed purpose. There is no value judgement in the word alone, and the word does not say whether the hacker is hacking with an intent to do harm. This is normally not how news media frames criminals, as they tend to use words which assign guild to the guilty, (like criminal, thieve, burglar, sexual predator, etc.). Attacker, vandal, and terrorist all do that, while hacker doesn’t.