It’s an established practice in journalism to describe accused who haven’t been convicted as “alleged” criminals, regardless of how damning the evidence is. Th

It’s an established practice in journalism to describe accused who haven’t been convicted as “alleged” criminals, regardless of how damning the evidence is. The legal basis of this is a fear of libel lawsuits. But I think even when a libel lawsuit is extremely unlikely the practice is still followed - out of an abundance of caution, out of convention, or perhaps out of principle - that is, out of deference to the presumption of innocence on a fundamental level.