Why does the news always use the term "alleged", even when the crime was caught on live tv, etc...?

Question

I understand that when a crime happens in private that it is appropriate to say that so-and-so is alleged to have done such-and-such; that's fine. But if a guy is caught on camera driving a stolen car, leading police on a wild chase, then seen on camera getting out of the car and being tackled, where is there any room for doubt? There's nothing "alleged" about it, unless you want to ignore the evidence of your own eyes. Yet the nightly news will duly report that the man "allegedly" fled from the police in a stolen vehicle, etc... never mind that nobody else was in the car! Another thing that gets me is when they refer to "alleged" rape victims, as if there were some question that the person in question was assaulted... how insulting!!!

Answer 1

Because you are considered innocent (allegedly innocent) until such time as you are found  guilty in a court of law.

Answer 2

For legal purposes. And according to the contitution, your innocent until proven guilty in the court of law. So until there actually found guilty, then they have to say alleged.

Answer 3

because it wasn't proven in court, YET.

Answer 4

Newspapers and TV stations don't convict anyone. The courts do that. In the situations you describe, the suspect often hasn't even been CHARGED, much less convicted. Believe it or not, what you see on TV or read in the newspaper -- the evidence of your eyes, as you say -- isn't the whole story.

Try this situation on for size: You are walking down the sidewalk on Main Street when several police officers followed by a news crew storm around a corner. The officers point at you and one shouts "There's they guy! Grab him!" The cops tackle you, cuff you, read you your rights and bundle you into a cruiser. The news crew gets it all on tape, of course. In minutes the local anchor is proclaiming on the air that "authorities have arrested the man who stole penny candy from Circle K, killed Santa Claus and returned all of his library books late." That would be you.

Oops.

Turns out the cops made a mistake. You fit the description of the Santa killer, who it turns out went the other way down Main Street, then hopped a plane to Chile, where he was later trampled to death by a llama who dislikes illegal immigrant gringos.

OK, I'm exaggerating a little. Not all that much, really. You'd be amazed at the mistakes that happen in law enforcement and the judicial system. The Innocence Project has exonerated 218 people who were wrongly convicted in courts across the country. Some have come off death row. Visit http://www.innocenceproject.org/ to see for yourself.

Don't be in such a rush to judge. Even when society takes its time, mistakes happen. Think how many more mistakes we would make if we did it your way.

"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape." -- Thomas Jefferson