I think one of the most dreadful aspects of live electronic journalism is being asked to answer a badly phrased and impertinent question over the telephone for all the broadcast audience to hear. Such a question was posed by news-and-talk-show host to a national treasury official during a network TV broadcast several days ago. The subject was the headline story in most of the day’s newspapers that the treasury official had certified the availability of funds for a plebiscite on the proposed Charter change. The question asked him was this: “How true is it that you had certified the availability of funds for a referendum on Charter change?”

That question struck me not only as semantically wrong but also insolent, accusing, and offensive from a journalistic standpoint. It’s a question that a self-respecting individual shouldn’t really answer, or perhaps correct and put in better perspective first before dignifying it with an answer. This rarely happens in practice, however. The respondent often ends up muddling through with a silly answer (‘That’s a half truth!”, “Absolutely true!”, “Perfectly true!”) rather than risk being looked upon as uncooperative, evasive, or tricky by the broadcast audience.

We know that a statement is either true or false in the sense of being a “fact” or having “the property of being in accord with fact or reality,” and that the “truth” can’t be measured by an answer to such a qualitative question as “How true is it?” Only in the most informal sense, as in gossip or trivial conversations (which a TV interview on matters of national importance is not), can this frivolous manner of “measuring” the truth be used. From both the usage and journalistic standpoints, therefore, that TV host’s question about the budget official’s reported pronouncement was terribly inappropriate.

The semantically correct way of phrasing that question is, of course, this: “Is it true that you had certified the availability of funds for a referendum on charter change?” This is a question that can be answered truthfully with either a “Yes” or a “No,” and people can answer it without being made to feel that their honesty and integrity are under question.

But what seems to me an even more serious matter is the sense of haughtiness and contempt conveyed by TV broadcast people when they ask questions of this sort. In this particular instance, the TV anchor already knew that the budget official had indeed made that pronouncement. Before asking him the question, in fact, she had just finished a live interview of people who were condemning that pronouncement. So, it can reasonably be asked, how could she all so suddenly backtrack and ask the treasury official how true it was that he had made that statement in the first place?

I submit that a better prepared and more English-savvy TV journalist would have avoided asking that kind of question at all. A much better and non-confrontational opening to that telephone interview would have been a simple statement that could put the subject in perspective for both the respondent and the broadcast audience: “Mr. So-and-So, you were reported as having certified the availability of funds for a plebiscite on the proposed charter change. Can you please tell us precisely where the funds will be coming from? Will be fund releases for that purpose be legal?” This is the sort of thing that clarifies rather than muddles up matters.

I think that since their jobs are deeply imbued with the public interest, TV news-and-talk-show hosts should closely watch their language on camera and avoid being carried away so often by their personal biases and political leanings. The least they can do is to be objective, fair, and civil in treating their respondents. This way, they will be protecting not only their own credibility and integrity as TV journalists but also that of the broadcast media as a whole. (April 10, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 10, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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I was making notes for a possible non-English-language topic for my column, thinking that grammar wouldn’t be right for Holy Wednesday, when my nine-year-old tapped my shoulder and asked: “Dad, why is Holy Week from April 13 to 20 this year? Last year, it was from March 24 to 31.* Why not hold it on the same date like that of Christmas Day so it doesn’t get confusing?”

Talk about deja vu! I had wanted to ask my own father that same question when I was about the same age as my son now, but never got to ask. Now I am a father myself—three times over, in fact—and yet could only give a stock answer to veil my continuing ignorance: “It’s because the days of the Holy Week are movable feasts, son. They base it on a religious calendar—you know, that kind where there are names of one or two saints for every day of the year.”

“But why, Dad? They could do the same to every other religious holiday, but they don’t. And another question: Why is Easter Sunday called ‘Easter’? This celebration came from the West, so wouldn’t it make more sense to call it ‘Wester’? And one last thing: Why is the bunny a symbol for Easter? It looks funny and doesn’t seem right.”

Those questions stumped me even more, so I told him: “I really don’t know the answers, son, but tonight I’ll get them for you. Go to sleep now and tomorrow we’ll talk again.”

My little research to answer my son’s questions, I must say, yielded more fascinating answers than I expected. To begin with, it turns out that the movable Holy Week schedules are not totally arbitrary at all. They are always exactly timed in relation to the natural, once-a-year occurrence called the vernal equinox. The equinoxes—there are only two of them—are those times in the year when day is precisely as long as night. The vernal equinox [in the Northern Hemisphere] comes in March, marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring, while the autumnal equinox comes in September, marking the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.

The advent of spring was, of course, always a cause for great celebration in the ancient world. The Anglo-Saxons welcomed it with a rousing spring festival in honor of Eoastre, their goddess of springtime and fertility. The Scandinavians called her Ostra and the Teutons, Ostern, but they honored her in much the same way. The importance of this festival to the early Europeans was not lost on the second-century Christians, who wanted to convert them to Christianity. They therefore made their own observance of Christ’s Resurrection coincide exactly with the festival. Then they gradually made it a Christian celebration, even appropriating the name “Eoastre” for it. Thus, contrary to what my son thought, the later use of the term “Easter” for the high point of the Holy Week had absolutely nothing to do with global geography.

People in those early times, however, celebrated the spring festival on different days, mostly on Sundays but often also on Fridays and Saturdays. This became a thorny issue. To resolve it, the Roman Emperor Constantine—who had by then become a supporter of the Christian faith—convened the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. This council came up with the Easter Rule, decreeing that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. The “full moon” of this rule, however, does not always occur on the same date as the full moon that we actually see; it is the full moon after the ecclesiastical “vernal equinox,” which always falls on March 21. By this reckoning, Easter will always fall on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. This rule has withstood the test of time, remaining unchanged exactly 1,682 years later to this day.

As to the Easter Bunny, it may be natural for us to think that it is simply a modern-day contrivance to liven up Easter Sunday. It isn’t. Its provenance is even older than that of Easter itself. The prolific rabbit, whose reappearance in spring unerringly marked the end of the brutal winters of those days, actually was the earthly symbol of the goddess Eoastre. Along with the Easter Egg, itself a symbol of rebirth in many cultures, the Easter Bunny was, in fact, a powerful ancient symbol for activity after inaction, for life after death.

In the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholics and the rest of the Christian faithful have similarly found such an enduring symbol. They have thus consecrated the Lenten Season in His Name as their holiest of days, ending it on Easter Sunday in a feast where church tradition and ancient belief find joyful convergence.

These are the things I’ll tell my nine-year-old when he wakes up today and reminds me of what I promised him. (April 15, 2003)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 15, 2003 © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

*This year of 2011, of course, we are celebrating Easter on Sunday, April 24—the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the ecclesiastical “vernal equinox,” which in turn always falls on March 21. This really sounds complicated and rather arbitrary, but there it is.

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