In Terms of Bollocks

The expression "In terms of" has during my lifetime gone from being one you heard very occasionally and almost always in its true sense - the value system used to assess, compare or describe something - to being one which most journalists and presenters use with wild abandon as a nominative particle, preposition, conjunction  or just about any other part of speech you can think of. Some can hardly get through a sentence without using it, and some use it several times in a single sentence.  Some go to enormous lengths to mangle their sentences in order to work it in.  

The worst culprit of all is the BBC's Matthew Amroliwala, who uses it in the most tedious and ludicrously unnecessary ways in every bulletin.  Today's classic from him came in his report of the arrest of Ratko Mladic: "It has been two decades in terms of time since ...."  He seems to be completely unaware what total bollocks he is talking.  

The cancer has now spread from the media to the general public with every Tom, Dick and Harry using it because they think that if the media use it it must be sophisticated.

Does anyone know what started this epidemic?  My gut instinct is that it must have been bashed into the heads of students on journalism courses as the smart phrase to use when you haven't got the time, or can't be bothered, or are too illiterate, to think what the right phrase is.  If so, it's completely backfired now because they are all trying so hard to use it that their speech has become not shorter but longer, more convoluted, and totally devoid of the elegance and style on which newspapers and broadcasters of old used to pride themselves.  It is impoverishing the English language.  I do wish the BBC would set an example by banning its use, even if that means Matthew Amoraliwala would be reduced to just staring at the camera and trying to think of something else to say.