I hate hearing every news story using the (wrong) word: pleaded. I agree that there is a perfectly good word to express the past tense of entering a plea, and that is pled. Even now, when I type "pled", the auto-spell underlines it in red, as if I've typed a non-word. What's next? Now that the media says that I've pleaded at court, should I say that I've readed the book, or that I've feeded the dog? Perhaps I should have leaded a revolt when the media began using pleaded instead of pled.