Falling Satellites

News is full of stories about a US reconnaissance satellite about to de orbit. It's fairly big and they have no prediction about where and when it will actually reentry. Much of the usual "sky-is-falling" talk. Vermont Public Radio compared the incident with the Skylab re entry and another US satellite reentry. VPR made no mention of the Soviet nuclear powered radar ocean reconnaissance satellite that crashed in northern Canada twenty odd years ago, complete with fallout from the smashed nuclear reactor. I guess they don't want to accuse the peaceful Soviets of flying military recon satellites, even when the Soviets have been out of business for better than a decade.
For that matter, VPR always describes the spacecraft as "spy satellites" rather than "photo recon satellites". Spying is illegal, and spies get executed. Reconnaissance is a legal operation of war or peace time.