Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Is The Detroit Free Press Using AI To Write Headlines?

Here's the headline for the story: The Detroit Free Press: Township of 65,000 people elects new top official by 5-1 landslide vote


Except the "Township of 65,000 people didn't vote 5-1 for a replacement supervisor, the Township Board did.

Legions of fact-checkers and all that.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, and there isn't, but the headline and later the article implies it was the voters of the township that did it, making it appear a lot more impressive a landslide than it was. 

And then he was sworn in. But two days later, Supervisor Steve Kaplan resigned to take another job. What to do?

Following the state constitution, West Bloomfield, a community of about 65,000 residents, elected a new supervisor on Monday afternoon – by a vote of 5-1.

Board members held an unscheduled special meeting, heard comments for an hour, and then elected two-term trustee Jonathan Warshay to the full-time job of running the big, affluent township that's 27 miles northwest of Detroit.

 Even the article is written implying it was a community-wide vote rather than the Board voting 5-1 to appoint one of its members as the new interim supervisor. 

In any case I certainly wish the new Supervisor success, and wish the prior one had not run for re-election if he had no intention of actually serving for another term.  But, Kaplan's running as an incumbent certainly blocked any challengers to the spot, keeping it in Democrat control (which to be fair it likely would have in any case), so that was likely simply politics and gamesmanship on his part to block competitors from the slot.

The article headline and content is still rather misleading as the citizens of West Bloomfield did not get an opportunity to vote for their new Supervisor, much less endorse him by a landslide 5-1 vote.

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