The comments under this CBC article impelled me to check the definitions of the verbs home in on, under which a para discusses this debasement, vs hone in on. Yet it doesn't explain this corruption's sources? I then tried /:
...Hone in began as an alteration of home in, and many people regard it as an error. It is a very common, though, especially in the U.S. and Canada–so common that many dictionaries now list it–and there are arguments in its favor. Hone means 'to sharpen' or 'to perfect', and we can think of homing in as a sharpening of focus or a perfecting of one's trajectory toward a target. So while it might not make strict logical sense, extending hone this way is not a huge leap....
The last sentence above confuses me. I interpret the penultimate sentence to rationalise how hone in could be deemed to relate to home in, so why does the last sentence then claim (per contra) that 'it might not make strict logical sense? Would an analysis of their etmologies help?