The Coalition of the Swilling

While I agree with your assessment and the connotations that involved with the language used, the journalist who wrote the Homeland Security online sex thing is in line with the current journalism thinking. The thinking is to get away with saying "allegedly" and saying things like "charged with," "was arrested."

The reason they are doing this is because the way of thinking is more accurate as to saying what happened. He was arrested. He was charged with. Once you say those things and attribute all the accusatory language, things are good.

HOWEVER, like you say, there's an abundance of people who use allgedly to cover things they don't think are that bad.

I'm rarely impressed with the ability of journalists to use the English language, but these don't seem too egregious. The rule should be to use it if to delete it would state an unproven fact (corollary rule: use it sparingly).

The examples that really irritate me are the ones in which the reporter refers to a convicted felon's "alleged" crime, e.g., "He was convicted for allegedy...". I just want to flog idiots like that.