Attempt to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String' on a null object reference when extracting data using from an arraylist

I am new to this platform and i've been stuck at this error for sometime i've searched for this error online but non of the answers seem to satisfy my case. I am trying to extract data using XmlPullparser on Android and adding the extracted data to an arraylist of type model('model' object that i defined). The XmlPullparser is parsing the document correctly as i tried to store the data in an arraylist of type String and it worked. The issue comes about when i store to the former and the following error arises

  java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String com.example.newsmodel.model.getTitles()' on a null object reference
        at com.example.newsmodel.MainActivity$GetStoriesInBackground.onPostExecute(MainActivity.java:121)
        at com.example.newsmodel.MainActivity$GetStoriesInBackground.onPostExecute(MainActivity.java:49)
        at android.os.AsyncTask.finish(AsyncTask.java:755)
        at android.os.AsyncTask.access$900(AsyncTask.java:192)
        at android.os.AsyncTask$InternalHandler.handleMessage(AsyncTask.java:772)
        at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:107)

Here's the code for parsing the Xml document:

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

import android.annotation.SuppressLint;
import android.content.Context;
import android.net.ConnectivityManager;
import android.net.NetworkInfo;
import android.os.AsyncTask;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;

import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParser;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException;
import org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserFactory;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
    TextView tvtitle;
    TextView tvDescription;
    ArrayList<String> titles;
    ArrayList<String> descriptions;
    ArrayList<model> items;
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        tvtitle = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tvTitle);
        tvDescription = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.tvDescription);
        titles = new ArrayList<>();
        descriptions = new ArrayList<>();
        items = new ArrayList<model>();
        new GetStoriesInBackground().execute();
    }
    private InputStream getInputStream(URL url) {
        try {
            return url.openConnection().getInputStream();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            return null;
        }
    }


    @SuppressLint("StaticFieldLeak")
    public class GetStoriesInBackground extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String>
    {

        @Override
        protected String doInBackground(Void... params) {

            try {

                URL url = new URL("https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/539444-539444-view-asFeed-bfdflfz/index.xml");

                XmlPullParserFactory factory = XmlPullParserFactory.newInstance();
                factory.setNamespaceAware(false);
                XmlPullParser xpp = factory.newPullParser();

                // get the XML from an input stream
                xpp.setInput(getInputStream(url), "UTF_8");

                //variable to check if parser is inside <item> tag
                boolean insideItem = false;

                // Returns the type of current event: START_TAG, END_TAG, etc..
                int eventType = xpp.getEventType();
                model item = null;
                while (eventType != XmlPullParser.END_DOCUMENT) {
                    if (eventType == XmlPullParser.START_TAG) {

                        if (xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("item")) {
                            insideItem = true;
                            item = new model();
                        } else if (xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("title")) {
                            if (insideItem)
                                //titles.add(xpp.nextText()); //extract the headline
                                item.setTitles(xpp.nextText());
                        }
                        else if (xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("description")) {
                            if (insideItem)
                                //descriptions.add(xpp.nextText());//extract the link of article
                               item.setDescriptions(xpp.nextText());
                          //add item to the arraylist after the last required tag has been extracted
                                items.add(item);
                        }
                    }else if(eventType==XmlPullParser.END_TAG && xpp.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("item")){
                        insideItem=false;
                    }

                    eventType = xpp.next(); //move to next element
                }

            } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (XmlPullParserException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

            return null;

        }


        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
          //  tvtitle.setText(titles.get(1));
          //  tvDescription.setText(descriptions.get(1));
            tvtitle.setText(items.get(0).getTitles());
            tvDescription.setText(items.get(0).getDescriptions());

        }

    }
}

the object class:

public class model {
    public String titles;
    public String descriptions;

    public String getTitles() {
        return titles;
    }

    public void setTitles(String titles) {
        this.titles = titles;
    }

    public String getDescriptions() {
        return descriptions;
    }

    public void setDescriptions(String descriptions) {
        this.descriptions = descriptions;
    }
}

Proof that the parser is extracting the data while using descriptions/titles Arraylist: emulator screenshot with text extracted from xml