Yes, the headline is misleading, but I wouldn't read too much into it. Sometimes a bad headline is just a bad headline. The editor got sloppy. End of story.

I also doubt that they tell him what to write. As someone who has edited newpapers, I'd be willing to bet that the sequence went something like this:

-Hitchens got to choose his premise and pitched it to the editors

-Editors gave it the thumbs up

-Hitch wrote the piece and e-mailed it to them

-It was edited, given a bad headline, and uploaded

Not that complicated.