First, any death or injury, in most any circumstance, is unfortunate and/or sad to someone. It's certainly human to feel for the friends, family and loved ones of anyone who gets injured or killed. No one likes to see death or injury caused by an activity like scuba but is it any worse than death or injury caused by an auto accident or other non-recreational activity? Not in my opinion.
I don't think we can really determine if diving is getting more or less dangerous by looking only at our little slice of the pie. Chances are most of us would have never heard of the deaths in question if not for this board. This board makes our slice of the pie only marginally bigger.
Statistically speaking, how many succesful dives do you think are reported to this board? I bet not many, when compared to the percentage of problem dives that do get press in here or in other major media outlets. The point being, greater access to media news, be it internet, TV, radio, etc, exposes us to more of bad stuff than ever these days. Greater exposure, does not automatically equate to thorough and complete knowledge of a topic. Its sad, but bad news sells, good news does not.
The one thing you can say for sure is if more people get involved in an activity like scuba, there will be more people who will get killed or injured doing that activity. I believe there is a relatively fixed percentage of people who will find a way to kill themselves, no matter how well they have been trained.