Ask LLOG: Semicolons used as commas?

From Josh E.:

I am a big fan of your posts on the Language Log and was wondering whether you often see semicolons used the way we might normally use commas to set off a dependent clause. Here is an example I just saw:

A Massachusetts family is demanding a full investigation after a state police recruit died after being injured during a training exercise late last week at the Massachusetts State Police Academy.

Police said Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, of Worcester was injured and became unresponsive during a training exercise Thursday on defensive tactics. He died the next day. […]

McGhee said he put about 400 to 500 recruits through the program without issue, and noted the academy has since trained thousands.

“While this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened; injuries to this level are very rare,” he said.

When I started teaching a decade ago, I rarely saw this issue. Now, I see it all the time in both undergraduate and professionally published writing. Is there a term for this kind of flattening of punctuation distinctions? Or would Geoff Pullum put me up there with Strunk and White as being wrong in my basic understanding?

FWIW, I'd be surprised if Geoff defended that semicolon.

I don't share the impression that similar errors have become more common, but that may be related to my acknowledged status as the World's Worst Proofreader…

What do the rest of you think?

We should note that the cited semicolons might be an editing error, rather than a reflection of the writer's punctuation preferences…

Some past posts with a connection to semicolons, though mostly not relevant to this question:

"Jane Austen: missing the points", 11/17/2010 "Death before syntax?", 10/20/2014 "More on grammar, punctuation, and prosody", 12/19/2017 "Peeving and breeding", 3/4/2018 "Barstool punctuation", 4/4/2020 "Trends", 3/27/2022