Unfortunately, just putting "illegal" by itself in the headline would not be up to journalistic standards. It's not up to a journalist to declare that something

Unfortunately, just putting "illegal" by itself in the headline would not be up to journalistic standards. It's not up to a journalist to declare that something is illegal. You either have to quote somebody, or use the passive voice "alleged". This is indeed a problem in our post-truth, postmodernist era. It has become a tactic to cast doubt on everything, no matter how well-attested. There's definitely a call for journalists to stop pretending that there are two sides to a story when there just isn't, but that conflicts with their self-image as a neutral observer. Plus, of course, for a great many people reading this, they'll say that journalists are in fact quite biased, and that the "facts" journalists would like to take as self-evident are in fact propaganda by their opponents. Nearly everybody will say that about at least one set of journalists... and a "neutral" journalist would be reluctant to insist that they are the ones being neutral.