Starting today, September 23, I am inviting Forum members to team up with me in doing My Media English Watch. This way, we can further widen this Forum’s dragnet for bad or questionable English usage in both the print media and broadcast media, thus giving more teeth to our campaign to encourage them to continuously improve their English. All you need to do is pinpoint every serious English misuse you encounter while reading your favorite newspaper or viewing your favorite network or cable TV programs. Just tell me about the English misuse and I will do a grammar critique of it.
Please keep in mind, though, that it’s not our intention in this media English watch to humiliate media people or to put a particular media outlet to shame for its bad English. We only want to extirpate the sin, not to flagellate the sinner. By being circumspect and non-adversarial in our media English watch, we stand a greater chance of motivating print and broadcast journalists to be more watchful of their grammar, vocabulary, and syntax in the context of their being role models for good English.
Let's therefore strictly observe the following guidelines and house rules:
1. Our media English watch will cover only domestic print and broadcast media outlets in the Philippines. Post in this section only the portion of the media story or statement with a serious or notable wrong English usage; ignore simple typographical and spelling errors unless their presence results in serious problems in semantics or logic.
2. Make sure that the by-line and the name of the media outlet are not shown in your direct posting on this section. The Forum moderator will immediately delete any posting that doesn’t follow this guideline.
3. If the faulty English usage is originally in digital form, post your report about it on this section together with a link to the website where it comes from. If you know how, embed that link in the title of your posting; otherwise, just indicate that link at the bottom of your report and the Forum moderator will do the embedding.
4. If the material with the faulty English usage is in printed form or in spoken form, don’t post it directly on this section; instead, send us e-mail about it to
jcarilloforum@gmail.com and we will make the posting for you. Just quote the statement verbatim in your e-mail and indicate the type of media outlet (newspaper, magazine, TV, radio), the section or program where it appeared or was broadcast, and the date of publication. Please understand that we will need to verify material of this kind, so please also indicate in your e-mail the publication title, date, and page where the material with the faulty English usage appeared. This information will be used for verification only and will not appear in the posting that we will make for you.
As when we started this media English-usage watch, our objective remains the same—to encourage the national newspapers and TV networks to be much more precise and vigilant with their English, whether in writing or editing their stories or when enunciating them during broadcasts. Of course, we also hope that through this media English watch, not only the media organizations concerned but you and our fellow Forum members could also relearn an overlooked or forgotten lesson or two in English grammar and usage—and, every now and then, perhaps in Logic 101 as well.
Let’s now get on with our joint media English watch!
