Newscasters and allegations

From StoneHome

I Am Not A Lawyer™.

That said, there's a bit which is really bothering me these days. In the fine American™ tradition, newscasters are borderline state bar material in their use of terminology, in the hope of not getting screwed^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsued. They're very careful what they will and will not say about someone suspected by the police of committing a crime, or whatever happens to be going on at the time.

So why don't they know what alleged means?

Very frequently, when someone goes into custody for committing crime XYZ, they're referred to as "the alleged XYZer." The problem is, an allegation refers to the crime, not the criminal. The allegation is what the source is trying to prove, not the qualification that the upcoming accusation is yet to be proven. The correct parsing of "the alleged murderer" leads to a bizare sitaution in line with Les Mis, where you suggest that a given person is secretly actually someone known to be a murderer. To allege a murderer is to accuse someone's identity as a guise over something prior, not to suggest that their status as murderer is yet to be determined in court of law.

The words that you're looking for, my dear newscaster friends, are "possible," "implicated," or "incriminated," depending on how they're used.