France is a different country with different laws. This is called a recall because that term is the legal mechanism under which the NHTSA has the authority to tell an automaker that they have to make sure all of the affected vehicles are safe to operate on public roads. This has a long history and is in no way unique to Tesla.

The French system for radio emissions uses different terminology for the same ideas. The English term they used was a “temporary withdrawal” with a full recall if Apple couldn’t update the devices:

https://www.anfr.fr/liste-actualites/actualite/temporary-wit...

This does mean that news coverage used the same language as the subject of the story, but that’s no more unfair than complaining that the BBC referred to a game as football even though you think they should have said soccer.