Thanks for giving a name to this phenomenon.

Indeed, it would not surprise me if some people actually want hedge drift to occur. They don't actually try to prevent their claims from being misunderstood.

It's much worse. In my experience as an academic, most departments simply pre-hedge-drift their press releases. Science journalists don't - and are often not qualified to - read and comment on the actual papers, all they have to work with is the press release.