News media writes reports about past tense events before the events have occurred
Have mentioned this before but today is another example, courtesy of the Washington Post, who published a pre-written report in advance of the actual BLS unemployment release. This is what they wrote. This was, in fact, fiction.
And was later rewritten to this:
The take away is that “news” used to be thought of as a “report about past events”. Today, news is pre-written fiction about future events on the basis of assertions and speculations.
The mistakes on pre-written reports or often like this – and suggest a reporter may have put together a story based on around what they were hoping would occur.