[ALittleLight]

In high school an essay was returned to me with a word I had used, "probably", struck out in red. I went to ask the teacher about it and she told me that I should not use the word "probably" when writing as it did not sound confident. My writing would be better without the word. I reread the sentence and it did sound more assertive and direct without "probably."

I then asked my teacher what I should write if I meant to convey that something was probably true, but that I actually wasn't certain or all that confident about it. She was stumped.

I can easily see how advice like that leads to "reporting" like this. Some editor goes "Hey, cut this segment, we can't use this, it's confusing, and the story will sound better without it."

The author's postscript, where he seems to forgive the BBC, is also pretty bad. Imagine what the editor will learn - "I edited a story to make it clearer and punchier. The expert complained, but the complaint went away when we said 'Sorry'. " If the editor realizes he inverted the meaning of his expert and completely got away with it - well, that will be a counter-productive lesson from the standpoint of accuracy in news.

The news has the incentive to be interesting, simple, engaging - all that. None of this nuance stuff. If editors get carte blanche for being new... I don't think that even a new editor should have trouble with the concept of "Don't invert what your expert says."

[bumbledraven]

> I then asked my teacher what I should write if I meant to convey that something was probably true, but that I actually wasn't certain or all that confident about it.

Not for school papers, but how about: "I guess [something]."

[ALittleLight]

I think the right choice is to quantify or bound what you mean. "The chance of X is 52%" sounds pretty confident and assertive. If you can't be that precise, then "For reasons X, Y, and Z this is likely, though not certain."

I think "probably" is completely fine though.