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Yes, great analysis.
Someone on fedi somewhere recently said "if the article makes you scared or angry, you're probably being manipulated".
It sounds like a fantastic rule of thumb. To be fair, it is REALLY hard to make use of language in a way that engenders zero emotional response on behalf of the recipient - and why would you want to even?
Unfortunately, when that emotional response later turns into disappointment after learning that it was fake, you develop a pattern of distrusting whomever it was that made you feel that way. Which at this point is almost EVERY major corporation, especially the formerly "news" ones?!
e.g., I recall feeling sick upon learning that Donald Trump had sex with a 14-year-old (at the time) girl. Even though I was being, um... "encouraged" to feel that way... I do not regret that emotion, nor distrust who sold me that story, to the extent that those facts are accurate? (based on her own testimony, which she said she was willing to swear to in a court of law, and she provided details that supposedly were corroborated, at least enough to place her at one of those parties, yes run by Epstein, where that occurred - e.g. there was an actual photo of her + DT standing together iirc; which I note that even if she faked a portion of the story, the news media source itself seems like they had done their due diligence at that point)
Whereas for the OP article I feel far more "betrayed", by its title, seeking to place blame solely onto baby boomers who are stuck in their giant empty homes due to the mortgage rates & housing availability situation - which they themselves may not feel is optimal (higher costs of heating / cooling for one) - rather than on the real sources that are causing the actual "problems" that the title alluded to. But live & learn - and from now on I will know to heavily distrust any article coming forth from CNN, which I find so incredibly sad, but like the housing crisis itself, is simply the unfortunate truth nowadays:-(.
Fortunately it's not quite as bad as Brietbart, at least not yet...:-(
Yeah, it's tricky. There is a point where a headline becomes deceiving and it's very hard to pinpoint where that is. I like your AI idea and will do some experiments along those lines.
I would say that if something, anything - a title, the article itself, etc. - informs, then it is useful, while if it MISLEADS then it becomes... the opposite. Right? In computer science, as I am guessing you are aware, that term even has the special name of a "worst-case scenario", being by far and above more damning than an average- or best-case one, and which has extremely important security and other considerations.
The title describes 2 active agents - boomers vs. young families - and sets them up in an adversarial capacity, even placing them at opposing ends of the sentence, connected together with "homes" and "problem". Btw, tbh I am aware that I may be thinking about this title more than the author themselves did, but even if so that does not negate the "strategy" involved - e.g. a spider puts out its web without any thought whatsoever, yet it still works, i.e., whether through the blind natural processes of thoughts evolving such that those that survive tend to be propagated while those that fail tend to be left behind. Anyway, ARE baby boomers and young families adversaries in this "fight", or is this yet another instance of the tactic of "controlling the conversation" - a tactic nowhere near pioneered by the Alt-Right, yet used to great effect by them lately nonetheless?
Which begs the question: if this media source, owned by extraordinarily wealthy people who live lives so disconnected and above the rest of us that the vast majority of us will literally never meet one during the course of our entire lives, is trying to pit boomers vs. young families against one another, what could they possibly hope to gain? Especially at the cost of journalistic integrity, that they used to uphold?! (or at least make the appearance of that anyway) Could it be that the owner(s) of CNN, or their friends, has & continues to make a TON of money by buying up real estate? i.e., I am saying that there are not merely 2 active agents here: there is a 3rd! (but one that this title is going to some trouble to hide away, by distracting us in pointing us towards the two other sides) This 3rd one, (purposefully?) not mentioned at all by this title, is the one causing all of those "problems"! Therefore in effect, it is really the prime agent even, hence arguably the one that was most worth mentioning in the first place? As in this alternative titling: "the wealthy tying up the housing market harms empty-nest baby boomers & young families alike, in different ways". You can imagine this in graph form as the prime agent with arrows pointing to each of the other 2, while the OG title ignores the prime agent entirely and substitutes the two arrows with a subtle & singular arrow from the baby boomers towards the young families - b/c SOMEBODY has to be causing these "problems", right? And if it is not the fault of the young families... why then, who else even exists that could be to blame, hrm....?!? Hence the active verbage there "Boomers WON'T PART", as I mentioned earlier like they are having some kind of dementia-addled temper tantrum akin to that of a toddler, who just needs the real adults (the "young families"... b/c that is the only other agent that exists, right?) to step up and do the right thing, perhaps convincing or even just simply to take it from them. When in reality the REAL, prime agent, who has an "in" with the media source, gets off scott-free of blame.
Fortunately, AI is a powerful tool, and while I think it will ultimately do a great deal of harm to our society (meh, the same as everything else though - like nukes, gunpowder, probably even fire itself originally:-D), it can also be used for great good as well, depending on how the user chooses to wield it. Thus I wish you luck in that endeavor! I will say that its victory may be short-lived though, as the success of titles such as these will only serve to embolden those who would push for their existence in the first place, and thus surely the content of the articles themselves at CNN will start to be affected next. i.e. AI can certainly be trained to replace the titles (possibly sometimes to hilarious effects, but likely quite useful often enough?), but until it is ready to replace the entire content of the article as well, filling in gaps by doing first-hand research even, it will never solve the problem of preventing us from being harmed by misinformation. Not that that makes it not worth doing - it could be fun, and even a help purely in the short-term is still a help, so yeah, I wish you luck!:-D