I disagree. It is more than just a nitpick. Saying black holes suck things in implies that they are doing something different than any other mass. Which they are not. Would you say a star sucks in stuff around it? Or a planet? Or moon? No. That sounds absurd. It makes it sound like blackholes are doing something different to everything else - which is miss-leading at best. They way things are described matter as it paints a very different picture to the layman.
Would you say a star sucks in stuff around it? Or a planet? Or moon?
For a star, I absolutely would. For a planet or moon, it depends on the context.
Would you say our planet is currently being sucked in by the Sun? or would you rather say that we are just orbiting the Sun?
Because odds are that if you approach a black hole without aiming directly for it, you might just end up in an orbit around it, not unlike we currently are around the Sun. Or you might even be catapulted out, instead of being “sucked in” in the popular sense.
In the case of the earth, no, I would say its an orbit. But if the path wasn’t circular and instead was describing the sun pulling somthing away from its existing trajectory significantly, then yes, I might describe it as the sun sucking it in. Obviously doubly so if it actually is destroyed by the sun.