When it comes to Bothans it's difficult because they are entirely EU creations, they get a mention in ROTJ but their look and culture and key characters exist entirely in the books and comics so you either go with that take, which is essentially Lionman :
or Nosferatu with whiskers :
Or you invent something new from scratch in which case why bother calling them Bothans?
Also the line in Jedi doesn't really do it for me.
The Rebels don't sound like an organisation that would divide itself along lines of race or species.
Back in 1983, I thought they were just people (more probably humans like Corellians) from the Planet Botha, I invented a little back story to fill in the lack of one in the film, that they were living right under the heel of the Empire and there was a mass break out to get the 'false' information out (the sort of trick John J Sheridan would later pull in B5) .
It was important to me that their planet was the focus and not their race because otherwise it makes Mon Mothma sound like a crass racist.
Imagine if a politician came on the air and said "Many Orientals died to give us this information".
It sounds really weird and kind of disturbing.
"Many Koreans died to give us this information", doesn't sound as bad because it's linked to a place not a race, species or ethnic group.
The Rebels are a freedom fighting military (or arguably paramilitary) organisation and rather than referring to a fallen regiment or squadron they are using a racial or species descriptive term???
If Bothans are just humans from a specific planet it makes it easier to avoid the confusion in the phrase (there could be Bothans in the room already for all we know) but it just seems a bit too much like ham-fisted heart string pulling about a people we know nothing about in the context of the film.
It's one of the reasons why I still like the Boba Fett selling the information to the rebels idea.
Outside the EU we know nothing about Bothans, we don't know why everyone is so sad about their loss as compared to all the other losses the Rebels have had.
It's just a random line dropped into the briefing to underline that the information was difficult to get hold of (but in a war almost all military intelligence is difficult to get hold of and often has a cost in lives surely that's a given).
Having them buy the information makes Leia's "I hope it was worth the price we paid" line cease to be emotionally squeezing.
Are Bothans more important than Humans or Mon Calamari?
How many is many enough to be worthy of two lines of dialogue but no appearance?
Or maybe Bothans are just so cute that the death of so many of them is universally heartbreaking :
