Knowing the motive is not the crime of hate. An individual's hate is their business. Violence that precipitates from said hate, is the purview of government prosecutors. You can use the motive to help prosecute the crime, but to make HATE itself the crime is the fascist trappings of the thought police and has no place in a free republic.
I agree with you re: hate crimes as a higher level of crime are bogus.
But people want to know the motive and when an abstract hate is the motive I expect that news organizations ought to report it.