The journalist's despite?

According to a recent BoingBoing segment,

Ballots for a special election in England's Clacton-by-Sea are the longest ever produced in U.K. electoral history despite¹ only one major party contesting the race.

The footnote:

1. This is the journalist's despite, wherein the word implies disregard when there is in fact a blatant causal relationship.

I'm puzzled by the idea that only journalists use despite to "[imply] disregard when there is in fact a blatant causal relationship". In fact, most uses of the word seem to fit that description, except where the "disregard" is relative to an asserted connection whose causal (or even statistical) validity the author doesn't believe.