Hungary's parliament elected András Baka as president on Tuesday — 140 votes to 6, Fidesz boycotting — and AP's headline filed it like this: 'Hungary's Parliament taps András Baka as president as part of Orbán-era purge.' Purge. The word you use for Stalin's officer corps, for loyalty lists, for people disappearing from photographs. Attached to a secret-ballot vote, in a parliament, for a largely ceremonial job. * Before we even get to whether the word is fair, enjoy this: AP's own browser-tab title for the same article reads 'Hungary approves new president in step to dismantle Orbán era.' Same story, same desk, two headlines — the one shipped to search engines says dismantle, the one on the page says purge. When your own metadata won't co-sign your noun, that's usually a sign the noun is doing something. * Now, who is András Baka? He's the chief justice Viktor Orbán got rid of in 2012 — not by firing him, which would have looked bad, but by abolishing his court out from under him, renaming the Supreme Court the 'Curia' and appointing someone else to run the new sign. Baka took Hungary to the European Court of Human Rights over it, and won. If one man in Europe has earned the right to appear in a sentence with the word 'purge,' it's this one — as the object. AP made his election the subject of one. * Other desks looked at the identical facts and reached for other words. Al Jazeera: 'Hungary elects supreme court judge ousted by Orban as new president' — the history is the headline, and the irony carries itself. Bloomberg: 'Hungary Elects Baka as New President in Shift From Orban Era' — motion, no menace. CNN went full procedural: 'Hungary parliament elects former supreme court head Andras Baka as president.' Nobody else needed the gulag register. * To be fair to AP, a wire service should absolutely keep a cold eye on any new government mass-removing officials — that instinct is the job, and Prime Minister Magyar is removing a lot of them. But look at AP's own inventory of the dismantling its headline calls a purge: a public broadcaster's news service the new government calls a 'propaganda factory,' a 'Sovereignty Protection Office' that Orbán's critics say existed to intimidate them, and — hold on — a 12-year term limit for lawmakers. Term limits. As a purge instrument. The body even slips the word into the government's mouth by paraphrase: Magyar's side 'has argued that the purge of officials... is necessary,' which is AP's noun wearing the government's coat. * And the man at the center spent his first speech arguing against the headline he'd been given. Baka told parliament that change must not come through 'revenge,' that 'this country cannot build a common future while its citizens see each other as enemies,' that nobody should 'have to be afraid, be silent, or feel like outsiders in their own country.' AP quoted all of it — under a headline whose entire job is to make you feel the fear he was ruling out. * Here's why this one sticks with us. Two days ago we watched AP describe Russia's military exit from its Syrian bases as an open question about 'future use' — the famous AP flinch, where a superpower's plain defeat gets a headline soft enough to sleep on. A democratically elected government restoring the judge an autocrat unseated? For that, the desk found its hardest noun on the first try. The flinch, it turns out, has a direction.