Opinion from Peter Saxon
Every now and again we receive a misdirected email of complaint from a radio listener, labouring under the misapprehension that radioinfo is a radio station.
Last Friday’s email from “Lucy” is a case in point.
Hello,
Listening to the 10.00 am news just now I thought I was living in the USA. A ‘sidewalk’ has been destroyed etc… For God’s sake, it’s a footpath, the last time I looked. Please don’t introduce American English into Australia. I love the English language just as it is.
Thank you very much,
Lucy (not her real name.)
I feel her pain.
I won’t mention the station’s name. But “Lucy” knew and, having been redirected to the source of her displeasure, will have contacted the station in question by now.
News veteran Scott Mayman has been banging on about the drop in Radio News standards on these pages for weeks but I don’t think it’s overkill to jump on his bandwagon.
Radio news and the way in which it’s presented is such an important part of our culture because it’s taken so seriously by listeners. If you can’t trust the news, who/what can you trust?
On FM music stations, news is the bit in each hour that’s meant to be a serious window into real events in the real world while the rest of the content is devoted to fun, lifestyle and music – as it should be.
On AM talk, it’s the bit that presents an unbiased, fact based bulletin while the rest of the content is filled with opinion – which is far more entertaining than cold facts.
At this point I should confess that even I have fallen victim to Americanisation of the English language. Recently, a reader wrote to complain that I had used the American spelling of “jail” rather than the English version, “gaol.”
In my defence, I explained that while I sympathised with our esteemed subscriber’s position, I felt that that particular horse had bolted. Most news outlets had abandoned the mother tongue some time ago and somehow, like the carp fish in the Murray, “jail” had killed off “gaol” to assert itself as the noun of common usage to define a place of incarceration.
No use flogging a dead horse.
Speaking of which, the last time I went to the races was about 20 years ago at Royal Randwick. The race book that was handed me harked back to the Victorian era. The word “shown” was spelt “shewn” which my computer’s spell-check insists on correcting. I imagine they’ve brought the Randwick race book’s language up to date by now, if for no other reason, than to appease the Microsoft Word Nazi that formats it.
Language, of course, is a living thing, not unlike biodiversity. Each year new words are created as old ones die. If this were not the case, we’d still be speaking as if we were bit players in Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing.’ “Wilt thou perchance be the fifth caller, thou and thy consort shalt be feted to attend a merrie performanse of Twelfth Night to be shewn at the olde Globe Theatre…”
Heard on radio, there’s no difference between “shewn” and “shown” or “gaol” and “jail.” But “sidewalk” and “footpath” are literally an ocean apart.
What then is the role of Radio News as custodian of the English language? Should it lean towards the conservative or the progressive?
I’d be interested in your view.
Peter Saxon
Structure too. Am I the only person who is perturbed by sentences which make no sense because house style requires a subject and object to be closer together than qualifiers?
We used to laugh at "The piano was sold to the lady with carved wooden legs". Now it's "A man driving a car hit an 80 year old pedestrian while drunk and exceeding the speed limit". So how fast was the pedestrian going?
themaiz - No you are not.
I left radio many years ago but was frustrated with young staff not knowing what an adjectival clause was. This is why we get... "The man was injured after his car hit a tree which was travelling at high speed." Better still was the "car that lost control". Don't get me started on sentences without verbs.
Peter and Lisa:
Radio needs to change with the community, but I am not sure it needs to be out in front, leading the charge.
Yes. "Jail" is a pet hate of mine but as far as radio news goes, mispronunciations are very disruptive. What also gets to me is the ambiguity. I wouldn't propose that grammar be stuffy and impede the flow, but on the other hand one often has to put unnecessary effort into interpreting what one has just heard, because of sloppy construction. And (he said, starting a sentence with a conjunction) don't get me started on the now seemingly standard method of editing a sound bite so that it ends on an upward inflection, leaving us wondering if what was to come would have been less unnecessary than what we just heard.
... and some of it is just plain wrong. For example on 2GB News on Friday about the Nice rampage, the reader attributed a grab to "the BBC's ..." It wasn't anyone from the BBC at all, just a vox pop BY the BBC. This plus stumbling delivery and mispronunciations are what we now expect from radio news. Maybe it's about time news presentation (on TV as well as radio) was put back into the hands of professional presenters and leave the journos to just write the stuff - although they seem to get a lot more of that wrong these days as well, like the ABC journo who had John Bannon as "South Australia's longest-serving premier" - not surprisingly she had probably never heard of the liberal party!
It's funny i'm English...and all the time i was on the radio it was always Jail..!! when i worked over in the middle east on the breakfast show we had a lovely Indian/English lady who 's pronunciation was all over the place the funniest was when she said the King of Spain has gone to his summer residence in Malaaaaaga..?? i told it's Malaga i shouldn't have said anything the abuse i got from her was very Anglo Saxon..!!
So what's coming out of this conversation is a set of thoughts about what is and isn't important for radio delivery (where there's no set of visual cues to confuse things), and preferences for:
* accuracy over style?
* clarity over common form?
* pronunciation over spelling (um... it's radio, where punctuation isn't evident either - )?
* neutrality over editorialising? (unless, like FOX News, there's a known stick-it-to-them house style. So glad that isn't here. So grateful that someone can see the creeping "just")
Personally: I don't mind "sidewalk" although, along with "shrimp", it's a word that to me sounds odd in Australian speech. "Lockdown" is a useful neologism, and nobody criticises me for saying "sked-yule" as opposed to "shed-yule". My judgement might be clouded from living with an American for 24 years.
In terms of impact, I find myself VASTLY more offended by the Australian non-interrogatory-rising-inflection than any use of "shrimp" or "lorry" or "sidewalk" or even references to high speed trees.
But I'm personally chuffed to know that there are people who share some love of language as a tool that doesn't have to be blunt to be effective.
Passion is a wonderful thing, and I bet Peter S is feeling pretty good right now that you've all demonstrated, clearly, that our community cares about communication.
Now, could you all get equally heated about education and training of technologists? :-)
Sidewalk: I think we have only seen the iceberg's tip. How about "He was holed up" or "the school was put into lock down"? My first thought is that the news "writer" just cut & pasted straight from a US feed, ignoring the anomalies in language and construction.
Perhaps to a lesser extent, words such as ceremony pronounced as Ser-ie-monie are a fist-thumping trigger.
Peter, you mentioned that we can rely on the news for its fact based reporting, ie based on fact but sometimes misinterpreted.
In the much used "BREAKING NEWS"heraldic introduction, the truth is sometimes a casualty of need for speed (in reporting) only to be corrected later when the damage has been done.
You mentioned that opinion is the domain of the talk back program presenter; however in news in TV & Radio opinion /dare I say it editorial is sneaking into news.
For example..."the girl only suffered minor injuries." "Only" is editorial/judgmental. The thief received a jail/goal sentence of just 2 years "Just" is again editorial /opinion.
It begs the question of how we, the listener/viewer/reader digest news. Are we, as a whole, swayed by these editorial/opinion peppered news stories?
Current affairs and talk back programs are where these opinions can be expressed, usually with impunity. Generally the listener can take what ever is said and process the info in the light of the environment in which it is presented.
Truth in news is precious. Our responsibility as reporters, journalists, news readers is to treat the truth as a sacred ingredient.
If we are not sure of the facts write the story accordingly, using specific and appropriate language. "The facts are unclear at the moment but it appears that two people........"
And please don't get me started on the constant, unnecessary, annoying use of the phrase "of course". "The derailment of course resulted in long delays on the northern line." Of course it did! No need to restate the flaming obvious! Enough already! (End of rant.)
The English language may hav (sic) been put together in the British Isles by the people there who over the centuries hav been adapting it and using it. They wer able to do that because as its users they owned it. Current Britons inherit the bragging rites (sic).
Its still happening. As u state, language is a living thing, and it keeps on evolving. The big difference now is that the users, and therefor (sic) the owners, ar not restricted to Britain. Much as it may pain Brits to admit this, the users/owners ar now worldwide. Its now a world language, not restricted to a particular nation or province or town.
We English speakers ar fortunat to hav shared our language and helped it become the worlds lingua franca. Lets keep it that way while it keeps on evolving. Lets regard it as a world language, not be parochial. Lets be willing to accept that it will hav lots of input from areas we ar not familiar with. Some of these unfamiliar words will be mor practical and logical than those we normally use. Lets appreciate that.
If we see sidewalk for footpath, lets accept that as an alternativ, not a foreign word to be avoided. Same with spellings, which, BTW, ar not the language, but a communication tool. Jail is a better rendition than gaol, and should be accepted as such.
Lets support the growth of English as the lingua franca by avoiding a parochial approach to unfamiliar words.
I’ve never been behind a microphone at a radio station, however, going back over the many years of listening to others read the news, I think I have heard the best and the worst.
More recently I participated in a one-day professionally facilitated, media training workshop. The subject was “Writing effective media releases”. We were given a task, based on some points relating to a major fire incident and the ongoing associated issues, to write a media release. Having written such, each participant was asked to read it to the group. On the completion of my “news reading” efforts, a younger lady to my left remarked “you should be on radio”! Mind you I have been told on occasions that “I do have a good voice (and sometimes, a head) for radio”.
It was the 20-plus years I spent in Rostrum that gave me a new appreciation of the English language. In particular, the words of the Rostrum Promise still resonate with me:
“I promise to submit myself to the discipline of this Rostrum Club, and to endeavour to advance its ideals and enrich its fellowship. I will defend freedom of speech in the community, and will try at all times to think truly and to speak clearly. I promise not to be silent when I ought to speak."
As for the question “What then is the role of Radio News as custodian of the English language? Should it lean towards the conservative or the progressive”, given the way the language has been mangled over more recent years through the demise of writing combined with social media “talk”, those of us who value the traditions would long for journalists and newsreaders adopt a conservative approach, maintaining an authorative (sorry, that should have read “authoritative”) voice!
This is a timely discussion for us here at AFTRS, as today is the first day of our news and current affairs classes for 2016 Graduate Diploma students.
Community standards are constantly changing, and it part of the radio professional's suite of skills to be able to move with the times. Sometimes we get that wrong, and sometimes an isolated pocket of conservative listeners will be out of step.
One of the major reasons for radio's success as a medium is its ability to remain agile and responsive in changing times. Radio News also needs to move with those times and it is the globalisation of the English language, rather than Americanisation which is the most significant factor.
Radio News in Australia has changed dramatically since the first broadcasts in the 1930s when media competition laws made it illegal for Radio to generate its own news service. Back then, presenters stiffly read stories out of newspapers which were already more than a day old when they went to air. Once real news services were established, their presentation was much more formal than today.
Can you imagine being an ABC radio newsreader in the 1950s (males only, of course!) and being required by management to change into your dinner suit before reading the 6pm bulletin so it would be afforded the formality it deserved? No cameras in the studio to capture the reader in his finery!
Radio News needs to remain relevant to audience demands and if the past is any indication, future news services will continue to evolve over time to reflect the changes in society. If they don't remain relevant, the audience will decide and they will likely be thrown from the sidewalk and into the gutter!