Some people take an extreme view, while many fall somewhere between the two camps.
Dictionary definitions avail us little, as there will always be large groups of people that claim it means something else. Emotive buzzwords will mean different things to different people and are often a stumbling block to civilised discourse. The request itself, however, can be objectively observed as an event. It either existed or it didn't, and safeguards such as avoiding undue influence are ancilliary. They are important decisions even when no request was involved, such as in the case of Tony Bland.