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Short-circuiting logic in newspaper reportage about religious rites

You can count me among the faithful myself, but I must say that I was aghast when I read this lead sentence of a front-page story by one of the Metro Manila broadsheets last Friday (January 8, 2010):

Unless the Manila police official had been correctly quoted professing some form of pop theology, I think there’s something terribly wrong with the logic, the mathematics, the semantics, and the journalism of that statement.

To begin with, Logic 101 tells me that there’s no direct correlation between the string of calamities that hit the country in 2009 and the estimate of “more than 3.5 million devotees…expected to attend the procession on the Feast of the Black Nazarene.” On the other hand, there’s indeed a direct correlation between the estimated turnout of devotees and the strength of their faith that the Black Nazarene could help them deal better with the vicissitudes of life in the year ahead; this is a matter of faith that’s beyond cavil.

This brings me next to the matter of the erroneous mathematics of the reportage. Later in the story, the police officer, MPD Chief Superintendent Rodolfo Magtibay, is quoted as saying that “an estimated 3.5 million devotees from ‘all walks of life’ joined the procession last year” but that he expected more to attend this year’s procession. He didn’t say that the expected 3.5 million turnout this time will be joining the procession because of “the string of calamities that hit the country in the past year,” and neither did he say specifically that an unspecified number of devotees beyond 3.5 million are coming because of that string of calamities.

It thus looks like it was reporter himself—or perhaps the deskman who edited that story—who thought that the positive differential between last year’s turnout for the procession and this year’s estimated turnout was “due to the string of calamities that hit the country in the past year.” That’s logical legerdemain if ever there was one. Clerics and obdurate fanatics perhaps can be forgiven for this short-circuiting of logic, but I do think that journalists worth their salt—and police officers as well in the performance of their lay duties (if, in fact, the MPD chief superintendent was correctly quoted)—shouldn’t be engaging in or be carried away by such dubious cause-and-effect reasoning.

For I must say that outside the realm of religious belief, such a direct correlation in logic and numbers is a serious breach of semantics and logic. It’s absolutely non sequitur, “an inference that does not follow from the premises”—a fallacy that doesn’t follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said in the story. And in journalistic reporting, I would say that such a form of reasoning is patently absurd, untruthful, and unacceptable.

So how do I propose to root out the errant logic in that problematic sentence? One way is to simply to knock off the false cause—“ the string of calamities that hit the country in the past year”—that’s identified as being responsible for the supposed effect:

“More than 3.5 million devotees are expected to attend the procession on the Feast of the Black Nazarene, police said yesterday.”

Or, if the reporter and the deskman are really keen on giving a strong religious flavor to the statement, perhaps they can inject the ostensive cause of the effect in a separate sentence in a more journalistically responsible manner, as follows:

“More than 3.5 million devotees are expected to attend the procession on the Feast of the Black Nazarene, police said yesterday. Some quarters expect the turnout to significantly exceed last year’s 3.5 million because, they said, more people would be asking for the Nazarene’s intercession to help them recover from the string of calamities that hit the country in the past year.”

Now, another case of a serious—and I might say dangerous—lapse in journalistic language is this front-page story in another broadsheet:

Pardon me if this might sound so direct, but I think the inference that can be drawn from that headline, “Captain of sunken ship seen with wine, women and song,” is that the person referred to is nothing less than a drunkard and womanizer. We probably can dismiss the “song” part as simply bad grammar, for in my reckoning, a song isn’t seen but heard—so the word “song” shouldn’t really be part of that enumerative set.

But if that headline seems unseemly, the lead sentence of the story is even worse from a language standpoint. I think the use of the verb “had” in this statement, “The captain of MV Baleno 9 had women and beer on the bridge before the ship sank on the night of Dec. 26 leaving at least six people dead,” isn’t only malicious but potentially scurrilous. Indeed, a more savvy reporter or deskman would have avoided using that verb in that context, considering the strong denotation of the verb “have” with the overt sexual act not only in English literature but even in the Holy Bible itself. And to have more than one woman—and on the bridge of the ship at that!—smacks of nothing less than debauchery.

Of course, after the evident sensationalist language of the headline and lead sentence, we find out later in the story that the ship captain was only “eating fast food and drinking with at least two women on the bridge in what appeared to be a ‘Christmas get-together party.’” By then, however, the unsavory and titillating semantic implications have already been delivered.

So how could that lead statement have avoided that semantic tomfoolery? By being fair and forthright about what really happened, perhaps in this wise:

Captain of sunken ship was drinking with women

“MANILA, Philippines—The captain of MV Baleno 9 was in the company of women and was drinking beer on  the bridge before the ship sank on the night of Dec. 26 and left at least six people dead, a survivor said Thursday at a Senate hearing on the sea tragedy.

One last thing: I think reporters and deskmen should resist the temptation of fudging their news reporting just so they can indulge in literary allusions. It’s obvious that the use of the line “wine, women, and song” in the original headline was an allusion to the following couplet that’s attributed to Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) by Bartlett's Familiar Quotations:

“Who does not love wine, women and song 
Remains a fool his whole life long.”

Strictly speaking, however, even that news story’s allusion to this couplet isn’t warranted at all from a language standpoint. This is because beer doesn’t qualify to be called “wine” by alcohol content and is technically only an “alcoholic beverage.”*

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Philippine Star: Bad semantics; unfounded featurization of a criminal act

Car thieves take police vehicle

“COTABATO CITY, Philippines  – A carjack gang nearly achieved what could have been the highlight of its criminal career when it stole a police patrol vehicle in Iligan City.

“But the vehicle proved too hot for the gangmen, who decided to leave it in a secluded area here on their way to South Cotabato.”

This story has a serious problem with its featurization. I think the reporter was talking through his hat when he described the carjack gang as having “nearly achieved what could have been the highlight of its criminal career when it stole a police patrol vehicle in Iligan City.” For one thing, the reporter knows absolutely nothing about that gang’s criminal career except for that single carjacking incident, and that gang has escaped without a trace after the deed. So how could he legitimately report that carjacking of a police car as the “highlight” of the criminal career of those thieves?

The story’s use of “nearly achieved” is also semantically erroneous. As an objective fact, that carjack gang was able to achieve its objective—that of spiriting away a police patrol vehicle in Iligan City. That they decided to abandon it later as being “too hot” for comfort is immaterial to this fact.

Here’s how the semantics and featurization of that story might be fixed:

“COTABATO CITY, Philippines  – A carjack gang brazenly stole a police patrol vehicle in Iligan City but decided to leave it in a secluded area here on their way to South Cotabato.”

“The vehicle, a brand-new white Toyota Hi-Lux police pickup that belongs to the municipal police of Madamba, Lanao del Sur, proved too hot for the gangmen. It was later found abandoned in Barangay Bubong.”

(2) Philippine Daily Inquirer: A case of the missing subject

Brainy beauty joins NPA, dies in Bukidnon

“MANILA, Philippines—Hers was a campus life spent mostly at late night parties and drinking sprees, waking up the next day with a nasty hangover. Still, she got good grades.”

The first sentence of that lead paragraph is the hapless victim of a dangling modifier. The progressive-tense verb phrase “waking up the next day with a nasty hangover” can’t find any noun or pronoun to modify in that sentence. It’s not “hers,” it’s not “campus life,” it’s not “late night parties,” and it’s not “drinking sprees” either.

This is the problem with using the passive voice for the main clause of such sentence constructions—it inadvertently eliminates the logical subject of the operative verb, which in this case is “spent.”

Now see how the proper subject is effortlessly provided to the sentence by the active voice construction:

“MANILA, Philippines—She spent her campus life mostly at late night parties and drinking sprees, waking up the next day with a nasty hangover. Still, she got good grades.”  

(3) The Manila Times: Too much redundancy due to overwriting

Dancing in the streets

“The district of Pandacan is popularly known for its massive oil depots along the turbid banks of the Pasig River. But what’s unfamiliar to most is that, besides being the hub of the three biggest local oil companies,  Pandacan is also the home to one of the most revered and anticipated festival dances in the country—the Buling-Buling.”

That paragraph is suffocating in too much redundant verbiage and detail. The phrase “popularly known” is a taulotogy for “popular”; “what’s unfamiliar to most” is unprovable from a comparative standpoint (why “most” and not “many”?); the repeated reference to the oil companies in the paragraph is untenable because it’s not even the subject of the story; and describing the Buling-Buling as “one of the most revered and anticipated festival dances in the country” is most likely an overstatement that won’t be worth all the time that would be required to prove it.   

I therefore suggest boiling down that paragraph without any loss of detail and moment, as follows:

“The district of Pandacan along the turbid banks of the Pasig River is popular for being the hub of the three biggest local oil companies. But what’s less known is that it’s also home to a much-anticipated festival dance—the Buling-Buling.”

That's a total savings of 17 words, or almost 30 percent!

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*Here’s why beer isn’t wine but an alcoholic beverage:

Source: AlcoholContents.com

As can be seen from the above, the beers range from 3% to 9% in alcohol content. The wines range from 10% to 22%. And liquor from 20% to 96%.

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