Maybe it's an issue of dosage. At the levels you would prescribe outside of the hospital to a patient presenting with symptoms of schizophrenia, it can definitely cause sedation. At higher doses, you could probably say that it is a powerful seditive. It just seems disingenuous in the context of this article - to explain to the layman what the medication is - to call it a powerful sedative. It is an antipsychotic which has sedating effects.
Warfarin is a blood thinner. Warfarin was originally used as rat poison. If a nurse gave it to someone they didn't like to increase their risk of internal bleeding, would it be more accurate for a journalist to say that the nurse administered a blood thinner that was not appropriate or rat poison?
Your claim that describing Haldol as a sedative is disingenuous is entirely about intention and justification, not about anything material. Yes, you can use it with the intention of improving a schizophrenic's condition. That doesn't make it any less of a sedative.
If you give Warfarin to somebody at the dosages used to poison rats, it'll probably kill that person, too. I think I get what you were going for with the comparison, but all medicines are very light poisons at the dosages in which they are administered (all substances in general are poisons at the right dosages, really) but Haldol is a strong sedative at the dosages at the dosages in which it is administered.
And can we really say categorically that we aren't actually using the sedation itself (to some degree) to calm the schizophrenic?
Warfarin is a blood thinner. Warfarin was originally used as rat poison. If a nurse gave it to someone they didn't like to increase their risk of internal bleeding, would it be more accurate for a journalist to say that the nurse administered a blood thinner that was not appropriate or rat poison?