Mind your language!
The horrifying thing is that the Indian media have chosen to drop the good old firewall that the word alleged constituted.
It is the news media’s good fortune that the victims do not file defamation suits against them, says MAHESH VIJAPURKAR.
When one of the three helicopters flying the presidential party landed on the tarmac at Mumbai’s airport and the pilot of the commercial airline aborted the take-off in the nick of time, newspapers called it a ‘near-miss.’ Some hyphenated it, some did not.
Commonsense says that if it was a near miss, it nearly hit so the news media said quite the opposite thing. It was a near collision. It was a near hit, to be precise.
But English as a language can be tricky. One needs to be awfully careful when handling it. Even if a million people use the language in a stupid sort of way, is it wise to use it that way? This can be argued.
May be I am crying in the wilderness, but that is a case in a point. For newspapers, and for that matter, television news crews including their editors, don’t seem to respect their most important tool – language in which they communicate.
They use terms which have not only become hackneyed but are also wrong.. They use words which mean something other than what they intended to convey. Language has words which can just convey what it is supposed to, not what the writer intends to. It can lead to serious errors in miscommunication.
Go to the archives and wade through the reports after the Satyam scam surfaced. It was as if every reporter connived with the desk to use words which were far from the accurate. For instance, what made a reporter write or say (depending on whether he or she was from print or the television) that the dramatis personae were grilled? Wouldn’t questioned have sufficed? Even interrogate implies long, continuous and thorough questioning, not just an initial set of preliminary questions does not constitute grilling.
After all, news media across the country, in all languages do tend to use the term raid by Income Tax and other enforcement agencies when the appropriate description would be search and seizure. Raids are by marauders, not officials though, much to their discredit, they do behave like predators.
Such misuse abound. There is this tendency to describe anyone picked up by police for even routine questioning as an accused though they are not that until charged. I have come across such hilarious expressions as unidentified accused in reports and rarely, if ever, has a ‘suspect’ ever emerged in a story or person called for questioning.
The horrifying thing is that Indian media has chosen to drop the good old firewall that the word alleged constituted. How often do we come across them in the crime stories?
This, of course, is no defence of Ramalinga Raju. There was no confusion about whether to call him an accused or a suspect because Raju came out publicly with his mea culpa by sending it across to the Bombay Stock Exchange. He made it easier for everyone to call him a criminal, but legally speaking, till a court pronounces, he cannot be described as one.
If a person picked up is not even a suspect but has been summoned for questioning, he gets publicised to the world as if he is the criminal, even before the courts judge him as one. The person called over to the police station could even be a potential witness. It is the news media’s good fortune that the victims do not file defamation suits against them; I see a nice good, rewarding legal business here that would help lawyers make money and set the media straight.
Such carelessness means the media does not exercise care and caution, does not care a hoot for the legal niceties, and are willing to judge, wittingly or otherwise, a person regardless of the consequences. They do not know the consequences because they have not been forced to face them. Not yet, and certainly not in good measure.
However, it is not my case that only crime reporters make a mess of the language. Most others do, too. There is scarce a department in a newspaper which does not make an error. But what is worrisome is the number and the frequency of such bloomers.
Nothing can ever be an excuse for the media which allows them to take liberties with the language which is their main tool, supposed to be used to convey the precise information in its finest nuances. Failure to do so would amount to misinformation. Misinformation need not be only by way of facts, but the way they are presented.
Linguistic hygiene is most often ignored, and grammar tends to be forgotten. Collective nouns are treated in the singular. Don’t we see so often that "media is’ instead of the "media are’ or the "police is" instead of the "police are"? Likewise, government "is" is in much fashion, not "are". I often ask myself whether it ought to be ‘
Style of presentation can change, not grammar. The Times of India uses the first personal singular ‘I’ in lowercase. It is horrifying but no one has complained. One does not have to be a purist to be agonising over these misdemeanours.
These apart, there are such howlers like "return back" as if one can return forward as well. There are such undistinguishing usages like so and so "attended the marriage" of a couple, when it was only a wedding, the start of hopefully a long marriage; it is for the couple to attend to their marriage, right? The government, it seems, do not move the bill anymore in the legislature or the parliament; they table them which is altogether a different thing. Reports, documents etc. to be provided to members or released are tabled.
The list can be lengthy. And I am not even touching upon the vulgarisms and slang in newspapers which demonstrate an attitude. The tragedy is that the more educated staff, among whom I would count the editors if not the sub-editors, let this pass muster almost on a daily basis. One is not talking of use of adjectives in a newspaper. Its use adds the editorial element to news which has to be simply stated. There are problems with apostrophes and misplaced punctuations. But we throw the required rigour with regard to grammar to the winds. What is needed is a good style guide for every newspaper which deals with correct usage and the style.
How many Indian newspapers have style guides? The Hindu has been promising one for its staff over the decades but it has not delivered. If one scans the five-days-a-week corrections offered by the Readers’ Editor of that newspaper, we know how even a newspaper which helped nurture generations of readers in good English by writing it that way, has slipped badly.
It is quite an honest and brave endeavour but obviously, the errors continue. The Readers’ Editor is perhaps tired of the daily finger-pointing but the people at the cutting edge, the reporters and the sub-editors obviously couldn’t care less. If they did, Mr Narayanan would have less work on his hands.
My argument is that all newspapers, which would necessarily have to adopt the latest twists and turns in language, should be aware that many people strengthen their language skills by reading them. To most readers, what is printed is the stuff they should trust and trust they do. They cannot be let down by the avoidable sloppiness. The desk hands are not there merely to headline a copy and then fit it on the page.
The Statesman is supposed to have a guide but few know if does have one. It does however seem to hold on to its standards. Of late, the Daily News and Analysis (DNA) which is quite young does have a style guide – basic and helpful.
Here is a caveat: when I mention style guides, it is less to do with the style of presentation, about whether to capitalise the head of state or a prime minister; some papers do, some don’t. The focus is more on the language part, especially its usage.
The New York Times evolved its Manual of Style and Usage over the decades and its authors are described as those who "have more than seventy-five years of combined newsroom experiences" at its newsroom. The Economist Style Guide is something I have seen on the bookshelves of people who love their English; no wonder it calls itself the ‘bestselling guide to English usage."
Obviously, these eminent publications share the details about what goes into their newspapers. The Times of
If newspapers – forget the television, nothing seems to have a value to them, anything goes as long as it titillates and entertains even when its output is supposed to be in the genre of news - do not want to waste the time of their talented writers to develop style guides, they could at least employ some simple devise of providing enough copies of good dictionaries, sufficient numbers of the Thesaurus and Eric Partridge’s Usage and Abusage of English.
That alone, however, would not suffice. The editors should demand the best writing. Or at least, good enough English. Unless the usage is finicky, the wrong words can only assist the reader in missing the point.
But it seems the media nor the readers care.
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