You're correct, i misspoke. I should have said that to a lay-person, such as myself and most of the other people reading the news reports, the distinction between a fighter and a ground attack craft are pretty hazy, especially in relation to determining the difference between the two by sight.
And you may think that you wrote nothing that suggested a helicopter, but you said it was a "ground attack craft" that was "pretty much defenceless against fighters, unless it can keep low enough to evade them by jinking." That made me think of a helicopter hiding behind a hill, popping up to hit some ground targets and then ducking back down again. So you said something that to you clearly indicated a plane that attacks things on the ground, and i heard "helicopter," which just demonstrates the difficulty of explaining these things briefly without going into detail. When the reporters said "fighter" i expect that most readers got a more accurate vision of what the craft actually looks like than i was initially getting from your description.
Sure it would be nice if everyone could be educated about everything, and if the nature of the craft that was shot down was key to what was going on in the area then yes, the reporters should have been more detailed in their descriptions and explanations.
However it doesn't really matter in this context whether it was a fighter or a bomber or a ground attack craft or whatever. I don't believe the reporters were trying to hide anything or that anyone is confused about the nature of its mission. It was a thing that flies and kills people, it was flying over there and killing people (or at least trying to) because there's a war on over there. However it go shot down, demonstrating that the other side has both the ability and the intent to shoot down things that fly. That's what is relevant to this particular story.
The fact that you want to add more details and educate everyone about stuff that was left out or glossed over in the reports is fine. Describing reporters using shorthand when talking about non-essential details as an attempt to cover up the killing of "Ukrainian citizens" just sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory.