It's not symmetrical like that. Journalists report on data based phenomena all the time, so understanding statistics is a fairly useful skill.
Programmers don't typically have to do journalism. They do have to write, but writing =/= journalism. If we're talking about writing classes for programmers, personally I don't think there's anything special about the programmer use case, as opposed to "writing in professional contexts" in general.
If you currently work at the NYT as a data-science researcher, doing the job that journalists without data-science experience can’t do, and you see your job imperilled by this, you’ll want to do exactly what these journalists are doing, but in reverse: Expanding their role to something they didn’t previously do in order to stay competitive in the job market.
Programmers don't typically have to do journalism. They do have to write, but writing =/= journalism. If we're talking about writing classes for programmers, personally I don't think there's anything special about the programmer use case, as opposed to "writing in professional contexts" in general.