While not wishing to seem pedantic, can't someone educate the journos of the difference between a precautionary landing and an emergency landing?
I'd certainly declare an emergency with an engine shut down in a twin.
And, the recent CYA thinking for U.S. carriers seems to be that you should declare an emergency for lesser problems to avoid being violated for not going into holding, having a Kumbya session with the dispatcher, maintenance, subject matter experts, the manufacturer and maybe the feds.
If you feel it is safer to take immediate action and get the aircraft on the ground on a long dry runway that you can see below you without an amended dispatch release, a check of OPSPECS, runway landing data etc., you'd better declare an emergency to make sure every decision you made is covered by FAR 91.3
Back in the day it used to be 'you are the captain, you ran the checklist correctly and took care of the problem, you got the plane down safely. Fill out a report when you get a moment, we'll forward it to the feds. It was your call and we stand behind your decisions, you were there, we were not, good job!'
Now it's 'you did not properly notify dispatch and scheduling before getting ATC approval to land with the flap problem, you asked for the equipment standing by but did not use the word emergency, the other pilot filed an ASAP report within the time window but yours was an hour late and not accepted, you pulled the CVR circuit breaker but did not annotate it separately in the maintenance log from your flap writeup. Since you didn't formally declare an emergency and your ASAP report wasn't accepted, the POI is looking at it and you'll probably get a letter from the feds on this one...'