MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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A newspaper flubs its English in its flood-disaster reporting

As a general assignments reporter for a major broadsheet in the early 1970s, I had my share of flawed English usage in my news and feature stories about killer typhoons and floods. Of course, they were mostly grammar and syntax errors resulting from relentless deadlines and the vagaries of the weather. Almost always, however, my stories would come out in print totally free of the mistakes of my original telegraphed dispatches—thanks to my paper’s highly competent and eagle-eyed deskmen. 

Anyway, I came up with my worst story when in the dead of night, with a power outage over the whole of Metro Manila, I was asked to join a reportorial team to cover what we had been told were chest-deep floods in Calumpit, Bulacan. We could hardly see a thing as our Toyota Land Cruiser wended its way in heavy rain through the heavily flooded McArthur Highway, and when the vehicle finally stalled somewhere in Bulacan in total darkness, several flashlight-bearing menfolk suddenly materialized to give us a push. They warned us that there was no sense in driving on because the floods were much, much deeper ahead, and they suggested that we turn back to Manila instead—which my team did with alacrity.

To make the story short, I really had no story to tell when we got back to our Intramuros newsroom—no facts, no names of typhoon and flood victims, no figures for casualties, no estimates for property damage, no nothing but my fleeting thoughts and sense impressions while racing through the darkness with hardly anything to be seen, identified, or counted. Still, I had to file an obligatory story based on that sudden reportorial outing, but all I could really manage was a feature story told in the second person—I was too embarrassed to tell it in first person—that went more or less this way: “On board a media vehicle, you wend your way through so many kilometers of darkness until the vehicle stalls and you see menfolk emerge from the flooded roadside…” Mercifully, my paper’s deskman judged my feature reporting completely worthless and made sure that it never saw print (at least not in the form that I wrote it). Otherwise, that bad reportage of mine probably would still be haunting me till now.

These memories of my natural-disaster-coverage days came back today (October 2) when I went over the Typhoon Onyong reportage of three of the major Metro Manila broadsheets. I could imagine that because of the terrible situation in the field, the reporters of one of these broadsheets might have faltered in their grammar and syntax when writing their stories. Still, the deskmen of that paper—had they been more conscientious and eagle-eyed like my paper’s deskmen in the old days—could very well have straightened out the grammar and semantic deficiencies of its reporters with just a little more effort.

To begin with, let’s take a look at this convoluted lead sentence of the paper’s headline story and a grammatically and structurally flawed direct quote later in the story:

(1a)
“MANILA, Philippines—President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday expanded her declaration of a state of calamity over Metro Manila and several provinces last week to cover the entire country to keep the prices of goods at their current levels.”

(1b)
“‘For the reasons that we can’t estimate the effects of Typhoon Pepeng but which is expected to bring rains to many areas, and for the reasons that nobody would take advantage of prices, I’ve been authorized by the President to announce that the declaration of the state of calamity is being extended to the whole country,’ Teodoro said over RPN 9.”

Now take a look at this grammatically fractured lead of a secondary flood-disaster story in the same paper:
(2)
“MANILA, Philippines — Say prayers, prepare and brace for the worst.”

And then consider these curious statements in a story headlined “Prayer is part of LRT disaster preparedness plan”:
(3)
“MANILA, Philippines—Aside from cooperating with standard typhoon preparedness measures, personnel of the Light Rail Transport Authority have been called to do one more thing: pray.

“‘That is part of our preparedness measures,’ LRTA Administrator Mel Robles said in a phone interview.”

And finally, examine this semantically flawed lead sentence of another flood-damage story in the same paper:
(4)
“MANILA, Philippines—Floodwaters in typhoon-ravaged parts of Taguig City started to recede on Friday, allowing local officials to bring assistance to affected families who refused to leave their homes.”

MY CRITIQUE AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS:

Let’s now analyze each of the problematic sentences above and see how they can be improved.

(1a) Troublesome prepositional phrase:
“MANILA, Philippines—President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday expanded her declaration of a state of calamity over Metro Manila and several provinces last week to cover the entire country to keep the prices of goods at their current levels.”

It’s difficult to make heads and tails of this sentence because it strings up and mixes so many details in one long, breathless cascade of words. By the time the reader’s eyes reach the phrase “cover the entire country,” the reader will have already lost track of which modifying phrase modifies what subject and which event relates to what time frame.

This confusion arises because of the writer’s decision to place the prepositional phrase “to keep the prices of goods at their current levels” at the tail end of the sentence. There, it becomes a virtually misplaced modifier that throws everything else in the sentence out of kilter. It is a misplaced modifier because it appears to modify the prepositional phrase “to cover the country” when, in fact, it should be modifying the subject of the sentence instead, which in this case is “President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.”

How did this happen? I suspect that it’s because that paper is following a hoary rule in old-style print journalism that in a straight-news story, you should never begin a sentence with a modifying prepositional phrase (the same rule, though, says you may freely do so in the case of feature stories). The theory is that when you do this in a straight-news story, you’d be burying the rightful subject of the sentence in so many words, thus diminishing its importance.

This rule may make sense if there’s very little possibility of the prepositional phrase creating semantic havoc if it’s placed at the tail end of the sentence. The writer or the deskman can easily check this by reading the sentence aloud. If the sentence doesn’t read well or becomes confusing, it’s a sure sign that it’s advisable to put that troublesome prepositional phrase up front of the sentence.

See how that problematic sentence suddenly becomes crystal clear when this is done:
(1a - Corrected)
“MANILA, Philippines—To keep the prices of goods at their current levels, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday expanded to cover the entire country her declaration last week of a state of calamity over Metro Manila and several provinces.”

Now for that problematic quote in the same story:

(1b) Grammatically and structurally erroneous quoted statement:
“‘For the reasons that we can’t estimate the effects of Typhoon Pepeng but which is expected to bring rains to many areas, and for the reasons that nobody would take advantage of prices, I’ve been authorized by the President to announce that the declaration of the state of calamity is being extended to the whole country,’ Teodoro said over RPN 9.”

It should have been obvious to the reporter and to the paper’s deskmen that this statement as transcribed and quoted is grammatically and structurally flawed. The two prepositional phrases that start “for the reasons that…” are clear signs that the speaker was faltering in making his extemporaneous announcement. No matter how educated and English savvy people are, in fact, they can’t always be expected to speak in perfect English especially if they are fatigued and are being subjected to the glare of TV cameras and the disconcerting thrust to their mouth of so many microphones. In such cases, the prudent—if not magnanimous—thing for print journalists to do is not to run the flawed extemporaneous statement as such but to paraphrase it.

This paraphrasing has to be done for two reasons: it spares the speaker from being public ridiculed for extemporaneous bad grammar and usage, and it spares the newspaper from the impression that it deliberately wants to publicly embarrass the speaker by recording his bad grammar and usage for posterity, or that its reporter and deskmen are themselves clueless about good grammar and usage.

Indeed, the quoted speaker as well as the newspaper’s reporter and deskmen could have all come out smelling like roses had the statement been paraphrased as follows:

(1b – Corrected and paraphrased)
Teodoro said that in anticipation of heavy rains that might be brought by Typhoon Pepeng and to prevent the prices of food and other basic commodities from being jacked up, the President had authorized him to announce the extension to the whole country of her recent declaration of a state of calamity in various flood-hit regions.

(2) Grammatically fractured lead sentence:
“MANILA, Philippines—Say prayers, prepare and brace for the worst.”

I’ll make short shrift of this sentence: it is grammatically obtuse and bad English for two reasons. First, it’s terribly unidiomatic—if not outright impolite—to tell people to “Say prayers.” Even the worst villains in the movies say it better: “Say your prayers.” Second, you don’t tell people to “Brace for the worst.” The verb “brace” being transitive, it needs a direct object to receive its action, and in this particular case it needs the reflexive pronoun “yourself” to function properly. The verb “prepare” is, of course, also transitive like “brace” and likewise needs the same reflexive verb.

That lead sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:
(2 – Corrected)
“MANILA, Philippines—Say your prayers, prepare and brace yourself for the worst.”

(3) A curious news story
“MANILA, Philippines—Aside from cooperating with standard typhoon preparedness measures, personnel of the Light Rail Transport Authority have been called to do one more thing: pray.

“‘That is part of our preparedness measures,’ LRTA Administrator Mel Robles said in a phone interview.”

A had a strange feeling that the reporter was being facetious or, at worst, being insulting when he or she wrote this story. Although it was headlined “Prayer is part of LRT disaster preparedness plan,” the story proper actually only used one word related to that headline: “pray.” There was no further mention or reference to prayer after that.

Perhaps the story wouldn’t have sounded so curious had the reporter—or the news desk—explained that the speaker’s asking the LRTA personnel to pray was in some way related to his being a ranking member of the religious group El Shaddai, which had worked for his appointment to his job as LRTA administrator. Then readers would have understood his enjoining LRTA personnel to pray in its true context.

(4) Semantically flawed sentence
“MANILA, Philippines—Floodwaters in typhoon-ravaged parts of Taguig City started to recede on Friday, allowing local officials to bring assistance to affected families who refused to leave their homes.”

We all know that Typhoon Ondoy, with maximum winds of only a little over 80 kph, brought more floodwaters than strong winds. It is therefore semantically incorrect and misleading to describe parts of Taguig City as “typhoon-ravaged”; instead, it could only be “flood-ravaged.”

Also, the verb “refused” shouldn’t be in the past tense but in the past perfect instead.

I would therefore correct that problematic lead sentence as follows:
(4a – Corrected)
“MANILA, Philippines—The waters in flood-ravaged parts of Taguig City started to recede on Friday, allowing local officials to bring assistance to affected families who had refused to leave their homes.”  

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