This is completely standard journalistic practice when reporting a quote on something that is currently contentious or unproven. For example, consider the two hypothetical headlines:

Activists decry police murder of protester

Activists decry police "murder" of protester

The first implies that the police murdering the protestor is an established fact. The second makes it clear that it is the activists who used the term "murder" rather than it being a non-contentious fact.

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lkey 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Both versions are fancifully direct in our era a media+police stenography, try:

Mayor denounces "radical activists" rioting and damaging city property in response to an officer-involved incident that resulted in one fatal kinetic altercation with a "loud and provocatively dressed" man.

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amiga386 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> officer-involved incident

Ah, the past exonerative tense. https://archive.is/wPVdy

Read McSweeney's guide to ambiguous grammar, where they lead you step by step from the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to the ultimate say-nothing sentence speed was involved in a jumping-related incident while a fox was brown, and the punchline is you can then translate "the St Louis County Police Department was involved in an officer-involved shooting after officers came under heavy gunfire" to "a police officer shot a black person" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown)

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-...

But no, that's the language issued by police departments covering their asses. Journalists are a little bit covering their asses in making clear what is a quote and what isn't, but they're still responsible for what they choose to quote, and to be clear on whether they have verified the claims they're quoting.

Ideally, unverified claims shouldn't even be in an article. But when there _has_ been some kind of stramash, they just don't know who did what, the need to rush out an article to get clicks means they'll just quote both sides and try to give them equal prominence until they can do more verification.

	▲	ratelimitsteve 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://patch.com/california/northhollywood/my-daughter-died... oh like this article that says a child was hit by a "LAPD bullet" as though wild bullets roam the streets of LA looking for children instead of being fired from a gun by a person who made a decision.

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jimbokun 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do the BBC or other outlets use "officer-involved incident" without quotes?

It's generally police officials that use that terminology.

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dylan604 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't help when snippets are post leaving out the other context clues where things like "according to" or "anonymous source stated" or similar attribute of the quote. Just putting words between quotation marks does not lead me to believe they were quotes if there is no attribution. Otherwise, it's a Trump level "people tell me" type of "quote".

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JoshTriplett 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In that case, that seems like a variation of the "past exonerative tense".

	▲	gowld 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do you consider every trial defendant to be exonerated?