It’s identifying what masquerades as factual, unbiased news reporting as a click driven opinion piece, no more and no less
What's happened here is you saw an article you didn't agree with and invented a completely fictional scenario to justify dismissing it. You're also fundamentally confused about the medium.
This seems to be part and parcel with the mindset endemic to HN where any coverage of any issue that doesn't 100% agree with the commentator's preconceptions is assumed to be Wrong and the author either malicious or incompetent.
It's disturbing to see people whose job it is to inform instead playing games with judging based on tortured analogies. That's what one expects from a freshmen in a mandatory English or philosophy course, not a national publication's longdorm writer.