MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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When news reporting confuses rather than informs and clarifies

Good journalistic writing isn’t only about grammar-perfect or near-grammar-perfect sentence constructions but about clear, semantically precise, and easy-to-read narratives as well. Indeed, when reporters get slipshod in their writing and editors become careless or not vigilant enough in doing their job, the result is news reporting that baffles rather than informs and clarifies.

Consider the following nine instances of confusing or semantically faulty lead sentences in major news stories of the four major Metro Manila broadsheets this weekend:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Confusing sentence with very long noun phrase as subject

After reading that lead sentence, were you momentarily at a loss as to who got arrested—the scantily clad girls, the animal rights group, or the couple who produced and sold the fetish videos? Did you wonder why there seems to be a merry mix-up of so many things in that sentence?

If your answer is “yes” to both questions, let me try to explain why you reacted that way:

When the subject of a sentence is a very long noun phrase, the operative verb gets shunted to the far end of the sentence—a situation that can get utterly confusing even if the sentence manages to remain grammatically and semantically correct. The subject of the main clause of that lead sentence above is one such long noun phrase—“a couple believed to be involved in the production and sale of gruesome ‘fetish’ videos showing small animals being tortured to death by scantily clad girls.” That subject is all of 26 words, so by the time you get to the operative verb phrase “were arrested by the police,” you would have already forgotten or lost track of what that subject is. There just are too many intervening words for a clear grammatical connection to be clearly established between verb and subject.

Such long noun phrases as subject usually result when sentences or main clauses are constructed in the passive voice, as in the case of that lead sentence. Despite the seriousness of the problem, however, the fix for it is often very simple and straightforward: just render that main clause in the active voice instead.

See what happens when we do that to that confusing lead sentence:

“A week after an animal rights group offered a P100,000 reward for any information leading to their capture, a couple got arrested by police in Burgos town, La Union, for their alleged involvement in the production and sale of gruesome ‘fetish’ videos showing small animals being tortured to death by scantily clad girls.”

Some grammarians may object that the verb phrase “got arrested by police” is too informal a usage for a news report. In that case, all we need to do is change the helping verb “got” to “were.” We will then get a passive voice main clause as before, but definitely clearer and much more readable this time:

“A week after an animal rights group offered a P100,000 reward for any information leading to their capture, a couple were arrested by police in Burgos town, La Union, for their alleged involvement in the production and sale of gruesome ‘fetish’ videos showing small animals being tortured to death by scantily clad girls.”

Note that in both reconstructions of the main clause, the verb has moved from the tail end of the clause to the front, right beside the subject, establishing right away for the reader what the subject and the action in that sentence are all about.

(2) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Confusing sentence due to misplaced modifying phrase

If you found it hard to fathom (as I did) what the lead sentence above is saying, it’s because the main clause is constructed like a pretzel. That it was the city government that made the decision is clear, of course, but whose revenues will be “beefed up” by that transaction—that of the private landfill operator, that of Metro Manila and Bulacan, or that of San Jose del Monte City?

Due to the confusing tangle of infinitive or prepositional phrases in that clause (“to allow…”, “to accept waste…”, and “to beef up…” all in a row), it’s really tough to answer that question. Somehow the logical train of what needs to be said by that sentence got broken. In fact, only when we finally realize that the prepositional phrase “to beef up its 2012 revenues” is a badly misplaced modifier—and one that’s causing all that semantic bedlam—can we possibly unravel the confusing semantic maze of that clause.

Now see what happens when that prepositional phrase is placed where it should grammatically and logically be:

This time it’s clear that what will be beefed by the transaction are the 2012 revenues of the San Jose City government. The sentence also gets this grammatical bonus: the participial phrase “alerted by a reduction in next year’s Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA)” gets to do a better job of justifying why its subject, the San Jose City government, made that crucial decision—it badly needs the money to cover an expected revenue shortfall.

(3) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Wordy, grammatically and semantically faulty phrasing

In the lead sentence above, the verb phrase “are now searching for witnesses who could lead to the identity of the killer of the company driver” is not only wordy but grammatically and semantically faulty as well. Witnesses don’t “lead to the identity” of whoever it is who did something dastardly to whom; they “could help identify” them or, if we want to be more elaborate but still semantically correct about it, they “could provide leads to the identity” of those guys.

I’d settle for simplicity and choose the more concise phrasing:

“The Laguna police are now searching for witnesses who could help identify the killer of the company driver of Honda Cars Philippines Inc. who was shot dead during rush hour on a major thoroughfare in Sta. Rosa City, Laguna, on Tuesday afternoon.”

(4) The Philippine Star: Confusing sentence due to faulty phrasing

The lead sentence above is difficult to figure out due to the faulty phrasing of the subordinate clause “while pursuing a violator when he fell from his motorcycle and slid under a vehicle that ran over him.” The bad positioning of the words “pursuing a violator” makes the verb “fell” squint—meaning that its action can ambiguously refer to either the violator or the traffic enforcer.

A good way to deal with that squinting verb is to position it closer to its antecedent subject, which in this case is “traffic enforcer,” as follows:

“A traffic enforcer pursuing a violator was killed when he fell from his motorcycle and slid under a vehicle that then ran over him in Quezon City at past midnight yesterday.”

Note that I have added the adverb “then” before the verb phrase “ran over him” to clearly indicate which action preceded which action in that accident.

(5) Philippine Star: Confusing sentence due to faulty phrasing and construction

The lead sentence above suffers from (1) the improper use and awkward positioning of the adverb “dead” after the verb “shot,” and from (2) a subordinate clause that points to a wrong antecedent subject. The form “shot dead” normally works well only in passive-voice sentence constructions, as in “A female faith healer was shot dead by…”, and sounds very awkward in the active-voice, as we can see in the lead sentence in question here.

Also, the faulty construction of the subordinate clause “while conducting a faith healing ritual…” gives the distinct but wrong sense that it was the two gunmen who were conducting the faith healing ritual. Due to the faulty syntax, therefore, the doer of the action in that subordinate clause isn’t clear.

A quick and very effective fix for this problem is to use a pronoun in the subordinate clause that clearly points to the correct antecedent noun in the main clause, as follows:

“Two gunmen shot and killed a female faith healer while she was conducting a faith healing ritual in Bayambang town, Pangasinan province, police reported today.”

(6) Manila Bulletin: Faulty semantics due to wrong choice of words

The lead sentence above is nonsensical because it has made wrong word choices for both its subject—“governance” for “government”—and its verb—“is now bent finally” for “has finally firmed up its decision.” The noun “governance” is the concept of the act of governing while “government” is the entity that does the governing. What this means, of course, is that using the word “governance” in this case is wrong because it can’t be a legitimate doer of the action of the verb.

Here then is that faulty sentence as corrected:

“The government of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has finally firmed up its decision to transfer its regional seat to Parang, Maguindanao from this city – its temporary seat for the past 20 years.”

(7) The Manila Times: Faulty and awkward sentence constructions; improper phrasing; use of wrong tense for the verb

The lead sentence above is constructed improperly. It starts with a longwinded prepositional phrase that, not even bothering to establish a proper subject, just lumbers on to its very last word. In short, it’s a nonsensical nonsentence. From the facts at hand, of course, the subject of that sentence should logically be any of these three: “local officials,” “dengue outbreak,” or “state of calamity.” 

Then the sentence in the third paragraph is semantically questionable and also grammatically faulty. It confusingly uses the highly figurative expression “passed to a man” for “passed unanimously”—a sudden shift from literal to figurative language that’s a big no-no in straight news reporting. Worse, it wrongly uses the past perfect tense for a verb that should be in the simple past tense, considering that the precise day of its occurrence is specified.

Here then is a suggested reconstruction of those two problematic sentences:

“VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur: Local officials declared the province under a state of calamity due to a dengue outbreak that claimed eight reported fatalities and hospitalized 1,169 others.

***
“To address the dengue outbreak, Ilocos Sur provincial board members unanimously passed Resolution No. 113, Series of 2011, last  August 1 declaring Ilocos Sur under a state of calamity.”

(8) The Manila Times:  Semantically faulty sentence due to slipshod phrasing

The lead sentence above is grammatically and semantically faulty due to the slipshod wording of the verb phrase “has recovered another body of the reported eight missing fishermen off Masbate.” It gives the erroneous and absurd sense that “the reported eight missing fishermen” have several collective bodies, another of which had been recovered. Its use of the present perfect “has recovered” is also wrong; the correct tense is the past perfect “had recovered.” This is because in reported speech like that lead sentence, the verb in the reported utterance takes one tense back—“had recovered” in this case—when the reporting verb—“said” in this case—is in the simple past tense. 

The sentence will yield the correct sense if that faulty phrase is reworded properly, as in the following rewrite:

“The Philippine Coast Guard on Wednesday said that the agency had recovered the body of another of the eight missing fishermen reported missing off Masbate.”

(9) The Manila Times: Grammatically faulty sentence with irrelevant overtone

I’m leery of the lead sentence above on two counts. First, I don’t think the advanced age of the accused is highly material to the regional trial court’s decision to junk the libel case, so it shouldn’t have been given that level of prominence in the news story. Second, the insertion of the qualifying phrase “the country’s oldest editor-in-chief” only serves to overload the noun phrase to the point of confusing the reader. Indeed, the long, overly modified noun phrase “the country’s oldest editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper and her publisher” gives the bizarre sense that the editor being referred to edited not only the weekly newspaper but her publisher as well.

Here’s how I would have worded that lead sentence to avoid its grammatical problems and get rid of its irrelevant overtone:

“BAGUIO CITY: The regional trial court has junked the libel case filed against the editor in chief and publisher of a weekly newspaper here.

“In a 13-page decision, Regional Trial Court branch 61 Judge Antonio Reyes dismissed the libel case filed by Baguio finance officer Leticia Clemente against Baguio Midland Courier editor in chief Cecil Afable and her publisher and nephew, Charles Hamada. Afable, 94, is the oldest editor of a weekly newspaper in the country.”

SHORT TAKE IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

The Manila Times: “Historic” isn’t the same as “historical”

Take a look at the first sentence of the third paragraph above: “Zubiri’s act was historical.” Is “historical” correct usage in that sentence, or should it be “historic” instead?

My Merriam-Webster’s 11th  Collegiate Dictionary defines the adjective “historical” in that context as “of, relating to, or having the character of history” and “famous in history” (in other words, things that happened in the past), and the adjective “historic” as “having great and lasting importance” (things that could either be of the present or of the past). There’s some semantic overlapping in the definitions of these two words, of course, such that anybody can easily mistake the other at the spur of the moment or in extemporaneous situations. But I do think that from a language standpoint, “historic” is the proper word in that statement and was, in fact, the word meant by the speaker but he had inadvertently used “historical” for it instead.

In such situations, I think the astute reporter or editor wouldn’t immortalize the grammatical mistake by quoting the speaker verbatim. As a courtesy to the speaker and in the interest of good usage, he or she would paraphrase the phrase instead to reflect the proper usage, as in the following suggested revision of that third paragraph:

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