When newspaper reporting confuses rather than informs and clarifies

[Joe Carillo]

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

Couple behind ‘crush’ videos nabbed

A week after an animal rights group offered a P100,000 reward for any information leading to their arrest, 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 were arrested by the police in Burgos town, La Union.

Senior Insp. Martin Ngadao, Burgos police chief, told the Inquirer Thursday that Victor and Dorma “Chita” Ridon, a Filipino couple from nearby Bacnotan town, did not resist when policemen armed with warrants for their arrest went to their house in Barangay Libtong.

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

Bulacan town accepts Metro garbage

CITY OF SAN JOSE DEL MONTE—Alerted by a reduction in next year’s Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA), the city government has decided to allow a private environmental landfill operator to accept waste from Metro Manila and its Bulacan neighbors to beef up its 2012 revenues, Mayor Reynaldo San Pedro said.

The decision could affect him politically, but San Pedro said he had been meeting with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) and the League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP) about the city’s offer.

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:

CITY OF SAN JOSE DEL MONTE—Alerted by a reduction in next year’s Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA), the city government has decided to beef up its 2012 revenues by allowing a private environmental landfill operator to accept waste from Metro Manila and its Bulacan neighbors, Mayor Reynaldo San Pedro said.

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
 

Cops looking for witnesses in driver’s slay

CAMP PACIANO RIZAL—The Laguna police are now searching for witnesses who could lead to the identity of 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.

Tairick Bonto, 24, was driving the company’s service van to deliver car parts to Caloocan City when he was shot dead along the national highway in Barangay Don Jose at around 4 p.m., city police chief Supt. Ismael Fernandez said in a phone interview on Thursday.

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

Enforcer killed while chasing traffic violator

MANILA, Philippines - A traffic enforcer was killed while pursuing a violator when he fell from his motorcycle and slid under a vehicle that ran over him in Quezon City at past midnight yesterday.

Enrique Viray, a traffic enforcer of Barangay Ugong Norte, died on the spot in front of a Mormon church along Temple Drive in Barangay Ugong Norte.

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.

(Continued in next panel)

[Joe Carillo]

(Continued from preceding panel)

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

Faith healer shot dead in Pangasinan
 
MANILA, Philippines - Two gunmen shot dead a female faith healer while conducting a faith healing ritual in Bayambang town, Pangasinan province, police reported today. 

Police said Mary Grace Tan, 44, of Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur, died from multiple gunshot wounds in the body.

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

Transfer of ARMM seat pushed

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The governance of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is now bent finally on transferring its regional seat to Parang, Maguindanao from this city – its temporary seat for the past 20 years.

ARMM Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo said the ARMM’s Regional Planning and Development Office has been directed to chart the requirements and mechanisms for the development of a prospected site in Parang, a coastal town hosting the Polloc Freeport and the Regional Police Office headquarters.

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

Dengue triggers calamity
 
VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur: With eight reported fatalities, 1,169 casualties hospitalized and a surge in numbers of dengue victims in this province prompted local officials to declare the province under a state of calamity.

Latest reports noted that eight dengue deaths were from Santo Domingo – 1 dengue fatality; Cabugao – 3 fatalities; Santa Lucia – 2 fatalities; Santa Cruz – 1 fatality; and Narvacan – 1 fatality.

To address the dengue outbreak, Ilocos Sur provincial board members had passed to a man Resolution No. 113 series of 2011 last Monday, August 1, 2011 declaring Ilocos Sur under state of calamity due to dengue outbreak.

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

Fisherman fished out, 7 still missing
 
THE Philippine Coast Guard on Wednesday said that the agency has recovered another body of the reported eight missing fishermen off Masbate.

The body was fished out off Balud town in Masbate at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Coast Guard is still looking for the seven other missing fishermen.

PCG search and rescue team recovered a total of 12 bodies since the search started.

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

Libel suit vs. 94-year-old editor, publisher junked

BAGUIO CITY: A regional trial court here has junked the libel case filed against the country’s oldest editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper and her publisher.

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.

Clemente sued the 94-year old Afable and Hamada for the paper’s January 29, 2006 editorial that allegedly imputed that she was the one referred to as the lady finance officer who “accommodates two romances at the same time.”

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”

Zubiri bled P2M monthly in poll protest

POLANGUI, Albay: Sen. Jinggoy Estrada revealed here that his colleague lawmaker Jose Miguel “Migz” Zubiri quit his post as he was beset with paying 600,000 a week or more than P2 million a month in the electoral protest he was embroiled.

Zubiri, whose mother is a native of Libon town in Albay also opted to resign from Senate on Wednesday to defend his family’s honor, dignity and integrity.

“Zubiri’s act was historical. He’s a very good example and must be emulated. He resigned from Senate because he doesn’t want to drag his name into a controversy. And money was a big driving factor as he was spending P600,000 a week or more than P2 million a month for the poll recount,” Estrada told The Manila Times.

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 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:

Estrada hailed Zubiri’s act as historic. “He’s a very good example and must be emulated,” Estrada told The Manila Times. “He resigned from Senate because he doesn’t want to drag his name into a controversy. And money was a big driving factor as he was spending P600,000 a week or more than P2 million a month for the poll recount.”

[Norman P. Aquino]

When editing copy, one does not only correct it for grammatical errors. You also need make it more readable and usually, that means cutting a long sentence, eliminating verbal deadwood, using action words and starting off with the main clause.

Original:
A week after an animal rights group offered a P100,000 reward for any information leading to their arrest, 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 were arrested by the police in Burgos town, La Union.

Your corrected version:
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.

Here is how I would change it:
Police in Burgos town, La Union have arrested a couple suspected of producing and selling fetish videos of animals being tortured to death by scantily clad girls. The arrest came a week after an animal rights group offered a P100,000 reward for information leading to their capture.

Original:
CITY OF SAN JOSE DEL MONTE—Alerted by a reduction in next year’s Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA), the city government has decided to beef up its 2012 revenues by allowing a private environmental landfill operator to accept waste from Metro Manila and its Bulacan neighbors, Mayor Reynaldo San Pedro said.

Your version:
CITY OF SAN JOSE DEL MONTE—Alerted by a reduction in next year’s Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA), the city government has decided to beef up its 2012 revenues by allowing a private environmental landfill operator to accept waste from Metro Manila and its Bulacan neighbors, Mayor Reynaldo San Pedro said.

My version:
CITY OF SAN JOSE DEL MONTE — The local government will allow a private landfill operator to accept waste from Metro Manila and its Bulacan neighbors as the city beefs up its revenues after a cut in its 2012 Internal Revenue Allotment, Mayor Reynaldo San Pedro said.

Original:
CAMP PACIANO RIZAL—The Laguna police are now searching for witnesses who could lead to the identity of 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.

Your version:
“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.”

My version:
CAMP PACIANO RIZAL—The Laguna police are searching for witnesses who could help identity the killer of Honda Cars Philippines Inc.’s driver who was shot dead during rush hour traffic in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, on Tuesday afternoon.

Original:
COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The governance  of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is now bent finally on transferring its regional seat to Parang, Maguindanao from this city – its temporary seat for the past 20 years.

Your version:
“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.”

My version:
COTABATO CITY, Philippines - The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) will transfer its seat to Parang, Maguindanao from this city, where it has held power for the past 20 years. (Two decades doesn't sound a bit temporary.)

I am out of time so I would rather throw the rest, especially the dengue piece, in the trash can. (That writer needs to go back to high school and study English.)

Cheers,
Norman

[Joe Carillo]

You’re absolutely right about what copyediting* is, Norman, and I would like to assure you that your prescription is precisely what I’d do myself when doing a professional copyediting job. In my Media English Watch, however, I made it clear from the very start that I would confine my critiques only to egregious and instructive English grammar and usage errors in the four major Metro Manila broadsheets (I expanded that coverage three months ago to include the news websites of the two leading Philippine TV networks). I wouldn’t intrude on the personal style of the reporter or on the institutional style of the media outlet, nor attempt to alter the word choices, syntax, and structure of the original passage to enhance narrative or expository quality; in short, I would simply point out grammar and usage errors and offer corrective measures for them.

While commendable, to copyedit news stories or specific passages as you suggest—and as you have demonstrated in your sample copyedits above—oversteps the parameters of my advocacy for excellence in English grammar and usage. I think that such a slash-and-burn approach to copyediting is called for only in the case of particular publications with high and well-defined standards for journalistic prose (and are willing to pay a high price for topnotch and highly select writers), not in a teaching medium like My Media English Watch that only seeks to help English-language learners—and English-challenged journalists—improve their grammar and usage.
-----------
*For those not in the know about the editing craft, there are three general levels or types of editing that a manuscript undergoes before release to its target recipient or in preparation to getting published. The first level is proofreading by the author himself or herself or by a third-party proofreader—an activity that involves correcting or refining the material for spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. The second level is copyediting for factual correctness, narrative or expository continuity, and writing style—what the trade calls substantive editing. The author himself or herself normally does this type of copyediting repeatedly before finalizing the manuscript for submission to a prospective publisher, but the process is invariably repeated by the publisher prior to accepting material for publication. And the third level is copyediting for printing—an activity that’s done by professional copyeditors to ensure that the manuscript meets the specifications of the publication’s stylebook and policy guidelines. By the time a manuscript gets printed, therefore, it has already gone through so many stages and levels of editing, thus making the likelihood of major grammatical, factual, and stylistic mistakes theoretically very minimal.

[Joe Carillo]

Question e-mailed by Oscar L., Forum member (August 30, 2011):

In your exchange with Editor Norman, you used the phrase “intrude on.”  Isn’t “into” the appropriate preposition, or even the correct preposition?
                                                                                     
My reply to Oscar:

I’m confident of the grammatical correctness of my usage of “intrude on” in this sentence from my reply to Norman Aquino:

“I wouldn’t intrude on the personal style of the reporter or on the institutional style of the media outlet…”

As you know, the verb “intrude” can either be transitive or intransitive. Either way, it can be followed by the prepositions “into,” “on,” or “upon” depending on the context of the statement:

“The reporter’s biases intruded into the news story about the missing diamonds.”
“An unexpected strong challenger intruded on the incumbent president’s reelection bid.”
“The professor suddenly intruded upon the conversation of two of her students.”
“The rogue lawyer intruded himself into the private life of his female client.”

The Collins English Dictionary—Complete and Unabridged makes no distinction between the intransitive “intrude” and the transitive “intrude” and points out that “intrude” is often followed by “into,” “on,” or “upon.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition) gives an example of a sentence using the preposition “on” for the intransitive “intrude.” And the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary makes no prescription for preposition usage for the intransitive “intrude” but gives an example using “into” for the transitive “intrude.” 

My recommendation: use “into,” “on,” or “upon” for “intrude” depending on the semantics of the statement and your gut feel.

Oscar L.’s rejoinder (August 31, 2011):

And so I am duly educated. Thank you.