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Wrong verb tense usage another big weakness of today’s journalists

Surprisingly, apart from subject-verb disagreement, another major weakness of today’s breed of news reporters and editors is wrong verb tense usage. One would expect that figuring out the correct tense for verbs would be a well-developed skill among them, considering that most of them have undergone four years of formal training in journalism or mass communication. Based on the high frequency of tense misuse in the major Metro Manila broadsheets and network TV news websites, however, this expectation appears to be significantly off the mark.

Consider the following serious cases of tense misuse that I found in their news reporting during the weekend:

(1) The Manila Bulletin: Two verbs in a row in the wrong tenses

In the lead sentence above, the past-tense verb “adjourned” is in the wrong tense; it should be in the present tense “adjourn” instead because it’s to happen the following week yet. As I explained in an earlier posting about the future tense (“Is it okay to use two WILL’s in one sentence?”), when two clauses denoting future actions are linked by the subordinating conjunction “before,” those two actions obviously won’t be simultaneous, so the sentence must make it clear that one of the actions will occur earlier than the other. In English, this sense is conveyed by making the earlier of the two actions take the future tense and the later action, the present tense, as in this sentence: “He will marry her before he travels to Australia.”

In the sentence in question here, however, the prepositional phrase “with only three session days left” is structured as an adverbial modifier of the prepositional phrase “before it adjourns sine die next week.” The phrase “with only three session days left,” however, has a future sense that’s equivalent to “there will be only three session days left,” so the future action that will follow it has to be in the present tense “adjourns”—definitely not in the past tense “adjourned” as wrongly used in the lead passage in question and not in the future tense “will adjourn” either, as might be expected.

Also, since the precise day of occurrence of the Senate approval of the bill is established by the frontline modifying phrase, it is incorrect to use the present perfect “has unanimously approved” in that main clause. It should be in the simple past tense “unanimously approved” instead. 

That tense of the verb in that lead sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:

“With only three session days left before it adjourns sine die next week, the Senate unanimously approved on third and final reading a bill that seeks the expeditious and timely release of benefits, pension and gratuities of government workers retiring from the service.”

(2) The Philippine Star: Wrong tense of verb

In the lead sentence above, the past tense “were trapped” is in the wrong tense. That verb should be in the passive present-tense form “have been trapped” instead since it’s specified that they have been trapped since the morning of the previous day.

That sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:

“CEBU, Philippines - Two men have been trapped inside a stone quarry in barangay Calagasan, Argao town in the southern part of the province since yesterday morning.”

(3) The Manila Bulletin: Wrong use of the present perfect

In the lead sentence above, the use of the present-perfect tense verb phrase “has pushed for the establishment of” gives the semantically wrong impression that the party-list lawmaker is no longer pushing the proposed legislation after filing it in the Lower House. The tense that will yield the semantically correct sense to that statement—that of continuing, uninterrupted advocacy of the measure—is the present progressive tense, as follows:

“A party-list lawmaker is pushing for the establishment of a 'plastic bag pollution fund' that would finance the environmental programs and projects.”   

(4) The Philippine Star: Wrong tense of verb

In journalistic English, the convention is to use the simple past tense when the adverb “recently” is used for the time of occurrence of an action. The use of the present perfect “has recently approved” in the lead sentence above is therefore incorrect. It should be the simple past tense “recently approved” instead, as follows:

“The House of Representatives recently approved on third and final reading a bill instituting a ladderized education for students taking up technical vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education (HE).”

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) The Manila Bulletin: Wrong modifier, unnecessary use of preposition

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as “continued accidents” in the English language; once an accident happens, it’s a done thing, unlike a disaster that may continue to unfold once it has begun. In the particular case of the lead sentence above, the grammatically correct modifier is “very frequent” or “spate.” Also, the phrase “stressed on the importance of” doesn’t need the preposition “on’; the correct phrasing is “stressed the importance of.”

So here are two correct reconstructions of that problematic lead sentence:

“To address the very frequent accidents along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) stressed the importance of laser speed guns to monitor and apprehend violators.”

or

“To address the spate of accidents along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) stressed the importance of laser speed guns to monitor and apprehend violators.”

(2) GMA News: Improperly phrased news headline             

For weeks now, the mass media have been saturated with news about fish-kills and double-dead milkfish being sold on the sly in public markets, but the headline above tells of more macabre news: youths shooting a dead jeep driver in Tondo. Where’s the sense and what’s the logic of shooting someone who’s already dead? To make sure that he’s double-dead like “botcha,” the term that media outlets take great relish in describing “double-dead” meat or fish? That’s extremely doubtful! I think that headline is simply the hapless victim of bad phrasing. Here’s how that headline may be fixed semantically:

“Jeep driver, shot by youths in Tondo, dies”
or
“Jeep driver shot dead by youths in Tondo”

(3) The Manila Times: Wrong term for gender; dangling modifying phrase

In the lead sentence above, the use of the noun “woman” as modifier in the noun phrase “a suspected woman abortionist” is grammatically improper; the widely accepted modifier in such constructions is the adjective “female” instead.

Also, the prepositional phrase “in an entrapment along a busy road in Balanga City” is a dangling modifier because it can’t logically latch on to any subject in that position in the sentence. To fix the problem, that phrase should be relocated as close as possible to the grammatical element that it should logically be modifying.

Here’s a rewrite of that lead sentence that accomplishes the two grammatical corrections indicated above:

“BALANGA City, Bataan: Police operatives on Thursday noon arrested a suspected female abortionist in a raid in her house in Pilar, Bataan and, in an entrapment along a busy road in Balanga City a few hours later,  nabbed a former Army soldier who allegedly supplies the woman with abortion-inducing drugs.”

(4) The Manila Times: Subject-verb disagreement error twice in a row

The two lead paragraphs above both suffer from a subject-verb disagreement error. In the first sentence, the head noun of the nominal group “over 447.2 metric tons of milkfish worth P33. 74-million from fishpond cages in the municipalities of Anda and Bolinao in Pangasinan” is the weight measure “metric tons,” which is grammatically and notionally singular, so the operative verb should be the singular form “has been ruined” instead of the plural form “have been ruined.”

In the second sentence, the head noun of the nominal group “240 metric tons of milkfish” is also the weight measure “metric tons,” so the operative verb should be the singular form “was reported (ruined),” not the plural “were reported (ruined).” (See the rationale for this in my Forum posting on nominal groups, “How the mass media can lick errors in subject-verb agreement for good.”)

That lead passage should therefore be corrected as follows:

“SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union: Over 447.2 metric tons of milkfish worth P33. 74-million from fishpond cages in the municipalities of Anda and Bolinao in Pangasinan has been ruined by fishkill that took began last Sunday, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources(BFAR) –Region I designated-Information Officer Remely Lachica said, here.

“Lachica said that 240 metric tons of milkfish was reported (ruined) in Bolinao while Anda listed the estimate damage to have been 207.2 metric tons; however, she said that this damage estimate is small compared to the present production.”

(5) The Philippine Star: Subject-verb disagreement error

The lead sentence above has a problem similar to the grammatically flawed sentences in Item 6. The head noun of the nominal group “more than P115 million worth of fish” is the singular noun “worth,” so the operative verb should be in the singular form “was lost,” not in the plural forum “were lost.” Semantically, what was lost was the peso value of the fish, not the fish themselves.

That sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:

 “More than P115 million worth of fish was lost in fishkill in Batangas and Pangasinan, the government said yesterday.”

(6) The Philippine Star: Grammatically flawed phrasing of sentence

The lead sentence above is grammatically flawed. It’s logically impossible to bring to the United Nations the “six to seven incidents of Chinese incursions into the country’s territorial waters”; they can only be brought to the attention of the UN, or the attention of the UN can only be called to those incursions.

Even assuming that the actual utterance was grammatically flawed (which is understandable in interview situations), it’s incumbent upon the newspaper reporter or editor to rectify it through an appropriate paraphrase. In this particular case, the actual statement is clearly presented in paraphrase, but the grammatical error was evidently neither spotted nor rectified by the reporter and editor.

Here’s the proper phrasing of that grammatically flawed statement:

“The government will bring to the attention of the United Nations six to seven incidents of Chinese incursions into the country’s territorial waters, President Aquino said yesterday.”

Another grammatically correct construction:

“The government will formally report to the United Nations six to seven incidents of Chinese incursions into the country’s territorial waters, President Aquino said yesterday.”

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