People think I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret to style.
(Matthew Arnold, Collections and Recollections)
The life of a journalist is poor, nasty and brutish. So is his style.
(Stella Gibbons, Foreword to Cold Comfort Farm)
Having established that broadcast journalists should aim to write as they would speak to an individual member of the audience, using a clear and accurate version of the spoken language, and avoiding journalese, the question then arises whether it is possible to learn techniques for writing against the clock, or whether good writing comes naturally. Some editors seem to believe that journalists have their talent genetically embedded somewhere in the anatomy – maybe in the blood, maybe in the nose: ‘He has a nose for a story, that one’; maybe in the bladder: ‘I have a feelin-in-me-water about this one’; or in the abdomen, home of the gut feeling. Many more distinguished editors believe no such thing.
We can all teach ourselves to write better. Techniques can be developed by younger journalists to subdue the panic induced by a close deadline, and to ensure a comprehensible story. And the best experienced writers are always working on their technique and seeking new ways of telling their stories. Of course, there are a million ways to write any script, and there is no universal formula. But there are principles and practices that give any writer a rockbed of certainty on which to build his or her personal style.
In writing, hence in style, the primary consideration is comprehensibility – therefore, clarity.
(Eric Partridge, ‘Style’, in Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English)
Simplicity is the key to happiness in the modern world.
(The fourteenth Dalai Lama, Happiness, Karma and Mind, 1969)
The first and overriding principle is that we want our scripts to be understood easily by the audience. Bob Jobbins who was in charge of the journalism at the BBC World Service for many years, says, ‘If I were to give one word of advice to a young journalist, it would be clarity.’ And it is clear that, for most editors, this clarity is coupled with simplicity and conciseness. Broadcast journalism is very much the art of précis; it is the technique of paring down the information to its essentials. A typical television news report may be only ninety seconds long, of which only forty seconds might be the reporter’s own voice. That’s the equivalent of about four column-inches in a broadsheet newspaper. A local radio report may be even shorter than that. Seconds are precious and cannot be wasted. So no word must be a waste of time. Richard Sambrook, who for several years was the BBC’s Director of Global News and before that a lead writer on the main BBC TV news programmes, emphasises the need for scripts to be crisp and concise.
You have to write as you would speak to someone, but you also have to pare it down. Less is more. Take out the superfluous words. Take out the unnecessary adjectives. At the same time keep it conversational to engage people. It’s very different from the written text.
Sir David Nicholas, former Editor in Chief at ITN, created a style that was known for its clarity. He summarises it like this:
Writing for broadcast news should be composed of short sentences, it should be direct, and it should be tightly, tightly edited. No excess baggage – like an airliner! Be absolutely tough. Go over the script if you have the chance and see what you can expunge without losing any meaning.
Sir David relates that he would practise his own scriptwriting by taking a column in the New York Times, and trying to reduce it to half its length without losing any facts.
In schools of journalism in the USA, you will hear tutors urging their students to ‘Kiss! Remember to kiss!’. This refers to the now well established advice from a veteran editor to a junior journalist wanting to know how to treat a story: ‘Keep it simple, stupid!’ In Britain, where we like to think we are a little more polite and sympathetic, KISS is said to stand for ‘keep it simple and straightforward’.
A sentence is more likely to be clear if it is a short sentence communicating one thought, or a closely connected range of ideas.
(Harold Evans, Essential English)
In broadcasting, writing simply and straightforwardly usually means writing sentences that are not too long. You do not want to have to take a breath in the middle of a sentence when broadcasting live or recording a report. Spoken English is generally composed of short sentences. In fact, when talking to each other, we sometimes use phrases that are not complete sentences. (Writing this way is certainly acceptable for some TV news commentaries, but is much less acceptable on radio, as will be explored in later chapters on the differences between the two broadcast media.) Over three decades, ITN’s main news presenter, Sir Alastair Burnet, made short sentences his trade mark. Spare words were cut. Those left carried more emphasis. His scripts were orderly. They were easy to follow. But there’s no need to be that rigid. There will be times when a more rounded, flowing sentence is appropriate to the subject matter, lending variety to the rhythm and permitting more expression in the voice. Either style will become monotonous without the other. But as a general rule, short sentences work better.
I would recommend any young broadcast writer to become comfortable with the shorter-sentence style. It makes it easier to write the story when you feel under pressure, and it will always work on the air. Clearly, it should not degenerate into a sequence of unrelated, staccato statements. But when it becomes second nature to write crisply and simply, it is easier to break out into a flowing sentence when the occasion arises. For example, the following sentence has 43 words, so would be difficult to read without having to take a breath.
The online search engine Google is turning up the pressure on its main internet rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, by launching a free email service called Gmail, which it says will block spam and will have five hundred times more storage capacity than Hotmail. (43 words)
It’s easy to break up the sentence. And it should not make it longer to read.
The online search engine Google is turning up the pressure on its internet rivals Microsoft and Yahoo. Today it launches a free email service called Gmail. Google says Gmail will block spam – and has five hundred times the storage capacity of Hotmail. (42 words)
If you listen carefully to broadcast news, you will notice that many of the most experienced and most respected correspondents use short sentences, especially when they want to convey a sense of tension or expectation. Here is a section of television commentary by the BBC’s John Simpson, as he prepared to spend the night with a Belgrade family in their air-raid shelter during the NATO bombing in 1999.
This is a city Tito built. New Belgrade. A dormitory suburb for the post-communist middle class. On a day like this everyone likes to get out into the sun. It’s only at night that clear skies mean heavy bombing. Each part of New Belgrade has its air-raid shelter. Tito thought they might be needed against attacks from Russia. Never conceivably from NATO.
A similar style was deployed when Simpson reported on the fall of Kabul in November 2001. Presumably it was written under some pressure.
It was just before dawn that the wild dash for Kabul developed. Thousands of soldiers intent on capturing the capital. It seemed to take no time at all to cover the twelve or so miles. As we drew nearer to Kabul, the grim evidence of battle. These were former members of the Northern Alliance who switched sides and joined the Taliban. No mercy for them. Then we saw they had captured another man. The presence of our camera probably saved his life. He was paralysed with terror. By now there were no Taliban left to resist. Then came the critical moment. Would the Northern Alliance simply race on and pour into Kabul itself, even though they’d undertaken not to? The commander in charge was determined not to let it happen. He ordered the armoured vehicles to block the way. The great advance was stopped in its tracks. But Kabul lay temptingly close below us now. The small BBC team decided to head on.
Of course, on air it was not at all as staccato as it looks on paper. Simpson’s delivery included pauses for the natural sound, and the pictures provided a flowing continuum of the military advance.
The most striking difference between reporting for broadcast news and reporting for newspapers is the use of very short and simple sentences or phrases.
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words … and in the plainest possible words.
(John Ruskin, Essays)
Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas.
(Thomas Babington Macaulay, English Essays)
Unfortunately, simplicity isn’t all that simple! Clear writing will be possible only if you have a clear idea of the essentials of your story. Good writing is not a display of dexterity, like calligraphy or accurate typing. It happens in the mind. So it is worth reflecting for a moment on what we mean by a ‘story’.
In Britain, we tend to take for granted the idea that our journalism is composed of a series of these so-called stories. The question, ‘What’s the story?’ is asked scores of times every day in every newsroom. But in many other countries, the concept is far from clear. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I organised training courses for producers and reporters in many former Communist countries, where for two or three generations there had been very little independent or enquiring journalism. So-called journalists had simply been reprocessing official information. I soon discovered that, in the new climate of a free press, some writers found it difficult to identify ‘stories’ because this required a process of analysis and decision-making that was unfamiliar to them. Many would confuse events with stories. ‘My story is that there is a meeting of the Baltic Environmental Alliance, with representatives of all the countries bordering the Baltic who are discussing how to clean it up.’ But what’s the story? It may be that the clean-up will cost 10 billion euros and will take fifty years. It may be that a Polish chemical factory is defying the agreements and poisoning Sweden’s fisheries. Very often, stories emerge from events, but they should not be confused with the event itself. The opening of an art exhibition (still a favourite subject for TV news magazines in former Soviet states) is a story only if there is something about it that is novel and interesting to the viewers.
It seems that in other languages, there is no precise equivalent of the English word ‘story’ meaning a piece of journalism, which is probably why so many journalists working in other languages use the word. The French histoire does not mean quite the same thing. To some students of journalism from overseas, ‘story’ seems an odd choice of word, suggesting fiction or fairy story. A journalist’s story is rooted in fact and related with accuracy. But it is still a narrative, and the word indicates quite neatly the idea that the reader will want to know what happens next or how it concludes. Journalism in the free world has developed as a series of short stories because it works. People want to read stories. Stories sell newspapers. In broadcasting, the listeners and viewers certainly want to hear or watch stories. ‘Please will you read this document’ is a much less appealing invitation than, ‘Listen, I’m going to tell you a story’.
But even in Britain, where there is a long tradition of enquiring journalism presented in narrative form, it is still possible to hear scripts that put the event at the beginning, and leave it to the listeners to find for themselves the main point of interest – the story. You, the journalist, should make the decision about what the story is. That is the essence of journalism. Your employer pays you to make those decisions. If you have a host of facts and a number of possible implications that you would like to report, sit back for a moment and consider which will be the one point to attract the attention of the audience and encapsulate the subject of the piece.
In my view, newspaper journalists are better at doing this than broadcasters. Perhaps that is because of the unforgiving discipline of writing the newspaper headline. Once committed to the presses, a boring headline is banged out in black and white perhaps millions of times, seeming more and more boring each time – certainly to the hapless sub who wrote it. So newspaper headline writers are extremely unlikely to decide that the story is, ‘David Hockney opens new exhibition’, or ‘Hillary Clinton arrives in Jordan on the latest stage of her Middle East shuttle’, or ‘Tory Party Conference opens in Brighton’. But broadcasters quite regularly use such headlines. They are diary items, not news.
In his book The Television News Handbook, the former Director of the BBC College of Journalism, Vin Ray, says,
Think how you would tell a friend what the story is in one sentence and bear that in mind as you put the piece together. Too much information will make your writing style tortuous and cramped … Bear in mind the difference between the subject of a story and your treatment of it.
Even experienced correspondents sometimes write like this:
The engine, an RB-211C Whisperjet, designed for the new short-range European Airbus commuter-liner, and said to be twenty per cent quieter than equivalent engines, is to be built at Rolls Royce factories in Derby and Coventry.
It’s the kind of script that has plenty of facts, probably lifted from a company press release, but no story-focus. The most interesting aspect of the story may well be that this is to be the quietest airliner of its size, and the story would then develop by mentioning new, tougher noise limits being imposed by the EU. It might go on to explain that new carbon-fibre blades in the engines reduce friction and are therefore quieter. That’s why Rolls Royce have called the engine the ‘Whisperjet’. If the story was being written for a regional service in the midlands, or a local radio station in Derby, the focus would be on the number of local jobs created or secured. For example:
Five thousand workers at the Rolls Royce aero-engine factories in Derby and Coventry have been told their jobs are safe for at least six years, because of an order to supply engines for the new European Airbus. The company says one of the reasons they won the contract was because the engine, the RB-211C, operates well below the EU’s tough new noise limits for short-range aircraft. They’ve called the new engine ‘The Whisperjet’, because it’s said to be twenty per cent quieter than its rivals. The works convenor at the Derby factory, Daniel Black, said the Airbus contract was ‘great news for all the people at Rolls Royce who’ve worked so hard to turn the company round’.
And whatever the story-focus, as a general rule, the information will be taken in more easily in shorter sentences. Trying to cram too many pieces of information into the same sentence is one of the main faults in broadcast scripts. If you hurl out too many facts and figures, the people listening at home, or on the motorway, simply can’t follow the narrative, or remember much of it a few seconds later. Writers are strongly advised to keep to the essential facts that support the key point of the story, and to deliver them one at a time.
As another general rule, when writing a bulletin story or the introduction to a full report, try to put the key point of the story first, preferably in the top line.
At a news conference this afternoon, the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, David Jones, announced that … ’
is much less effective than:
A new police unit is being set up to fight the spread of crack cocaine in the West Midlands. Announcing the move at a news conference this afternoon, the Chief Constable, David Jones, said … ’
We should not confuse the peg with the most interesting point of the story. As most readers of this book will know, the ‘peg’ is journalists’ slang for the topical development on which we hang our story about an interesting issue. It is the reason for doing the story today. The peg may be a conference, or the publication of a report, or the start of a hearing, or no more than an anniversary. It should certainly be mentioned early in the story, but not necessarily in the opening phrase. The Sky News presenter Julie Etchingham says,
My real pet hates are any links which begin ‘A report out today …’ or ‘According to latest figures …’. They’re dreadful in any news bulletin, but are particularly inappropriate for 24-hour news, which is supposed to be constantly fresh and appealing.
Sometimes there can be several stories in the same news programme stemming from various government initiatives, and the effect can be make your output sound like the official pronouncements of a state broadcaster: ‘The Prime Minister has announced that …; The Department of Health is to …; The Foreign Secretary has arrived in …’. Putting the story first avoids this rather dull and formal approach, and will interest your viewers and listeners much more.
In regional television and local radio, where on some days quite a number of bulletin stories can originate from the police calls, the danger is that too many stories can begin with ‘Police in …’: ‘Police in Stirling …; Police in Dumbarton …’. It’s much more interesting to put the key subject of your story in the first line. And, incidentally, it should be The police in … (see ‘The definite article’, Chapter 3).
There will be occasions when you want to build up to the story, either to make sure the significance or context of the latest development is clearly understood, or simply to attract the listener’s attention. The section on writing studio introductions will develop the idea that an inviting opening line is extremely important. Sometimes this will be in the form of a question directed at the listener or viewer. ‘Should schoolchildren be forced to wear uniforms?’ (Radio Four, Today). This introduction then went on to the new angle, which was a report from a head teachers’ association.
But introductions that are obviously teasing should be used sparingly, and usually on less serious stories. The formula ‘Jane Williams thought it was just another quiet Sunday when she took her Yorkshire terrier, Lucky, for his morning walk …’ can very easily become a stroll into cliché-land. In general terms, it is good practice to get into the habit of identifying the key point of interest in your story, and putting it first. Teachers of journalism often summarise this advice as, ‘First sentence must interest, second sentence must inform.’
It is not very good practice to start with a subordinate clause. ‘Following his pledge at last week’s party conference to reduce taxes for poorer families, the Chancellor has …’. By definition, people expect the news to be new. To attract their interest, it’s usually best to put the new development in a running story first: ‘A new tax credit for low-income families is likely to be a key part of next month’s budget …’.
In fact subordinate clauses should be used sparingly throughout broadcast news scripts. The crisp, tight, simple style that avoids long sentences, which is advocated by all leading editors, has little room for hanging ideas, of the ‘Following … After … Due to …’ variety. You would be unlikely to say, ‘Needing some milk, I went to the corner shop.’
Here is a typical paragraph from a quality newspaper. The Times is reporting Toyota’s apology to its customers for the way they had been treated over the recall of cars in 2010: ‘The apology from the commercial director Jon Williams, the highest ranking Briton among Toyota’s UK executives, came as the company conceded that the recall of 180,000 cars in Britain – one in nine of the Toyotas on the roads – with potentially defective accelerator pedals, was likely to last for weeks.’
It’s perfectly clear in print. But this single sentence, with more than fifty words and some numbers to remember, would be difficult to read on the air without running out of breath or losing the audience’s attention. We seldom talk to each other that way; and remember that many people in your audience may be listening a little casually. Presenting them with one idea at a time makes it much easier to follow the news. So if you find yourself writing, as in the above example, … from … as … with … in the same sentence, try dropping in a couple of full stops.
In a similar way, the simple, direct style of spoken English is much more comfortable with the use of the active voice rather than the passive. So we tend to say, ‘Dad bought the paper’, rather than ‘the paper was bought by Dad’, even when replying to a question about who had bought the paper. The active voice suits broadcast news. It is usually a more logical line of thought, it is a more direct and muscular style, and it is more in line with normal speech.
The passive will be more appropriate when the point of the story that you want to emphasise is someone or something on the receiving end of an action. For example, you would probably write that ‘fifteen thousand patients were taken to hospital by taxis in London last year, an increase of fifty per cent …’, rather than ‘taxis took fifteen thousand patients …’. You would report that a wild kangaroo attacked a British tourist. But if the tourist happened to be Prince Harry, you’d almost certainly write that ‘Prince Harry was mauled by a deranged kangaroo …’. As ever, there are no firm rules. But there is a strong tendency for the clearest, crispest writing to use the active tenses. The direct style also expunges all redundant words, and has surprisingly few adjectives and adverbs.
No word should be encumbered by a parasite, consuming space and debasing the language.
(Harold Evans, Essential English)
Using redundant words, or tautology, is a serious crime for broadcast journalists, who are allotted just a few seconds to get their story across. Every word uses up precious time. The need for clarity, as well as brevity, requires a ruthless approach. Redundant words must go.
Here are just a few examples. In most cases, the words in italics can be deleted with no loss of meaning, and in many cases the deletion gains the advantage of greater impact from greater precision.
absolute perfection all-time record appear on the scene; appear to be as compared with best ever; first ever brand new collaborate together complete monopoly consensus of opinion crisis situation dates back from during the course of the day end result/product essential condition ever since final completion followed after for a period of three years future prospects gainfully employed hurry up inter-personal relationship in the world of/in the sphere of business/politics/media join together joint cooperation | last of all made out of more preferable mutual cooperation never at any time new creation, recruits, record original source outside of paying off the debt passing phase past history patently obvious reduce down resigned his/her position as self-confessed short space of time spent his whole life still continues/persists surrounding circumstances temporary reprieve total extinction totally destroyed usual custom very first time violent explosion worst ever |
There are many more of these tautological usages, which waste time by saying something twice. A precise style saves valuable seconds, carries more impact, and has a pleasing precision and simple elegance. Be taut rather than tautological.
As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out!
(Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson)
One of the biggest differences between writing for print and writing for broadcasting is the number of descriptive or qualifying words deployed. Most print journalism is packed with adjectives, either to sell the paper hard with sensationalist language – massive, miraculous, desperate, tragic, explicit, steamy – or to describe the general mood, context or political climate as concisely as possible – troubled, controversial, bitter, conciliatory, desperate, beleaguered. In spoken English, these adjectives and similar adverbs almost always sound like over-sell, and many are pure journalese. Talking to your listeners and viewers in hyped-up language sounds unnatural and can sound ridiculous. ‘3G phones are incredibly vital to the entire industry’, said an excitable BBC Breakfast presenter in 2003. And a political correspondent more recently exclaimed, ‘The Department of Education is facing total meltdown!’.
All the senior editors I have spoken to about good broadcast journalism agree that there are too many adjectives and adverbs in too many scripts. Instead of strengthening the effect of the story, these descriptive words can have the opposite effect, reducing the impact of the information. Words such as total, major, huge, massive are becoming meaningless. Why are debts invariably crippling? When is a fire huge? The 2009 bush fires in Australia were certainly huge, and so was the firework factory explosion in the Netherlands, which reduced scores of houses to rubble. So should a factory fire on an industrial estate in Swindon be described as huge just because there was a lot of smoke, and ‘ten appliances attended the scene’? Do politicians ever deliver a minor speech? Simple, unadorned nouns or verbs can deliver more punch than when they are weighed down by qualifying words.
I remember being in the BBC’s newsroom in Belfast one evening during the worst of the troubles in the ’70s, when the Head of News, Robin Walsh appeared. He was a formidable editor of sharp mind and strict standards. Leafing through the script for the midnight news, he asked the duty journalist softly, ‘What’s the difference between an enquiry and a special enquiry?’ The adjective was promptly deleted.
Facts have much more power than vague adjectives inserted to try to make the story seem bigger than it is. Say how many buildings have been flooded, how many destroyed by the earthquake, how many vehicles are involved in the pile-up, and adjectives such as devastating, disastrous or massive become superfluous. And on television, the pictures will often speak for themselves.
Here is an extract from a 2002 television news report on the Queen Mother’s funeral, by the BBC’s Jennie Bond. It was an emotional occasion for many. But there are no emotive words, few descriptive words. There are no references to grieving crowds or ashen-faced relatives. The elegance of the report is in its simplicity.
Tonight, within the precincts of Windsor Castle, the Queen Mother has been laid to rest beside her husband George VI. It was a private service attended only by her close family. In contrast, her funeral this morning was a choreographed chapter of history that drew some 400,000 people to central London. It was a day of sorrow, a day of ceremony. As the coffin was born from Westminster Hall, the crowds fell silent. Forming up to escort her once again, her son-in-law and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren she loved – William and Harry, who said she had inspired them…. It was a procession marked by the order and dignity which were at the core of her life. The guncarriage, the same that was used at her husband’s funeral 50 years ago.
The report also has a simple symmetry, beginning and ending with a reminder the Queen Mother had been a widow for half a century.
Another difficulty in the over-use of adjectives and adverbs is that very often they can imply value-judgements. Tim Orchard, for many years a programme editor with BBC TV news, particularly dislikes reporters describing something we can see, or worse, describing someone we can see.
If you can see someone speaking on TV, let that clip of actuality be judged by the audience. If the reporter’s commentary introduces it with something like … an angry Prime Minister then said … how can we be sure that the adjective is fair? Perhaps he was grimly determined, or weary, or resolute, or mildly irritated!
It’s a more difficult issue for radio journalists. Good radio should sometimes describe the scene, or give listeners an impression of the mood. I think the best advice is simply to take care, and avoid overstatement or sensationalism. It may be tempting to say that ‘the talks went on into the night, with the management desperately trying to head off a second damaging strike …’, but in reality they may be negotiating confidently, wearily, cunningly or resignedly. The reporter probably doesn’t know. The BBC’s Director of News says pointedly (or should that be grimly, or significantly, or cryptically?), ‘The choice of descriptive adjectives and adverbs on radio is definitely an issue.’
Accuracy is also ‘definitely an issue’ for any aspiring broadcast journalist. It is the number one issue. Readers of newspapers, listeners to radio, and viewers of television all expect the news to be trustworthy. They expect it to be true. Opinion surveys, such as those conducted on behalf of the Eurobarometer or the World Economic Forum, tend to show that broadcast news enjoys a higher level of trust and credibility than the printed press. This seems to be because most newspapers have a recognised position in the political spectrum, or a known stance on important issues. The tradition of broadcasting in Britain is one of impartiality. It is enshrined in the BBC Charter, and in the laws and codes of practice that regulate commercial broadcasting.
Every news and current affairs programme, from a flagship national nightly news to a short summary on a local radio station, shares the same requirement for accuracy. It takes years for a TV or radio channel to establish its credibility, and it can take a couple of seconds for that credibility to be lost through a serious error. It may also lead to a damaging and expensive lawsuit. It is hardly surprising, then, that news editors demand that their journalists get it right. In broadcasting, where the risks of making a mistake are far higher than in the world of print, because the journalism is a continuous process with much of the journalism transmitted live, in-house guides repeatedly urge their staff along these lines:
We want to be first and we want to be right. But we want to be right first.
No-one that I know lost his or her job because they weren’t first with a story. I know several whose careers were damaged by being wrong. So it is of prime importance not to include anything in your script that is not certain or verified. If in doubt, leave it out – better still, find out.
Words are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them.
(William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)
Other books on journalism give advice on good research and ways of verifying information. This book is about the language of broadcast news. And the accuracy of the language can be as important as the verification of your story. If a bulletin contains inaccurate usage, can the listener trust the facts? If the language is sloppy, does it not indicate a sloppy mind and sloppy journalism? Consistently accurate and stylish use of English brings a strong sense of respect and credibility to your broadcasting. But there are pitfalls. There are many possibilities in the English language for ambiguity or imprecision.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass)
As Lewis Carroll was indicating, philosophers like to analyse the meaning of words and the meaning of meaning. Words certainly can mean different things to different people. The meaning of some words is in a constant process of change. The difficulty for journalists is whether to accept the meaning that most of the audience believes is correct, or stick to the meaning in the dictionary, which is the ‘traditional’ definition of a word, usually related to its root or origin. Better-educated listeners and viewers, who are certainly not all retired colonels living in Tunbridge Wells, are disappointed (if not actually disgusted) when they hear a newsreader or a reporter mistaking the technical meaning of a word. Here are some examples of words used regularly by journalists who clearly do not know what they technically mean.
Anticipate: to take action to prevent something, or to forestall. ‘The goalkeeper saved the penalty because he anticipated where the ball would go.’ But these days, most people use the word as a synonym for ‘expect’.
Apogee: ‘The process of European integration, which is reaching its apogee in the joint constitution …’ (The Times). We should avoid using the word in this way, as a synonym for ‘peak’ or ‘climax’, for two reasons. First, it really means the point in a planet’s orbit when it is furthest from the Earth; secondly, hardly anyone uses the word in normal speech.
Biannual: occurring twice a year; not once every two years, like the Ryder Cup, which is a biennial event. Incidentally, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, bimonthly can mean either twice a month or once every two months. So it’s a word to avoid.
Disinterested: unbiased by personal interest. Uninterested means not interested.
Enormity: does not simply convey the idea of size. It means extreme wickedness. It is not a word to be used lightly. In 2009, BBC Radio 4 was reporting on British Airways staff being called out on a 10-day strike at Christmas: ‘Cabin crews seemed stunned by the enormity of what had been decided.’ I think that is a mistake. But when Radio 4 reported on 11th September 2001, ‘President Bush was in Florida when the attacks began. He made a statement at a time when the scale and the enormity of the deeds was far from realised’, the word was used precisely and accurately.
Evacuate: technically, to empty something. So if people are being evacuated, it can suggest that they are undergoing an uncomfortable medical procedure. It will please the purists to say ‘houses were evacuated’ or ‘people were moved from nearby houses’. Nonetheless, ‘people/residents/patients were evacuated’ is now used so widely that the BBC’s A Pocket Guide to Radio Newswriting concedes ‘Let the people be evacuated’, and some dictionaries now include the definition ‘remove to safety’.
Forensic: do you know what it means? For several years I have been asking classes of postgraduate students of journalism, and no-one has got it right yet. They tend to think it means ‘scientific’. So the meaning of this word is now seriously in doubt. The dictionary will tell you that forensic means ‘relating to courts of law’. Forensic medicine is the application of medical science to legal problems. A forensic examination means not a scientific test, but an enquiry carried out as thoroughly as a cross-examination in court. We should write ‘forensic scientists’ or even ‘police scientists’ rather than ‘forensic experts’ or ‘forensic teams’. I realise these new usages are very widely accepted; but people working in forensic science, and many police officers listening to your news, will know that you don’t know what the word really means.
Fulsome: does not mean generous, it means over-generous, excessive or gushing. So to report that the Prime Minister gave fulsome praise to his retiring press secretary would be rather unflattering to both of them.
Infer: to deduce something. It does not mean ‘imply’. A speaker implies what a hearer might infer.
Refute: to prove that something is wrong; it should not be confused with ‘deny’ or ‘disagree’.
Surrogate: substitute. So it’s the mother who is a surrogate, not the baby.
There are many more examples in the list of dangerous words at the back of this book. And you will have your own pet hates of words that are often used incorrectly. The celebrated columnist Miles Kington campaigned against sloppy language throughout his career. He once wrote that he saw a listing in Radio Times for a programme in which someone would be ‘trolling through the archives’. Kington was scathing. ‘Anyone who can’t tell the difference between troll and trawl shouldn’t be allowed to edit magazines without a grown-up in attendance.’
There are many words in the English language that can be confused with another quite easily. And in broadcasting, where different spellings are irrelevant, words that sound very similar can mean very different things. In The BBC News Styleguide, John Allen calls these pairs of similar words ‘confusables’. He quotes an example from a story on Radio Four:
A boy of twelve is in intensive care in hospital after a group of teenagers doused him in inflammatory liquid and then threw a lighted match at him.
The writer meant to use the word inflammable, capable of being set on fire, not inflammatory, tending to stir up trouble. Here are some of John Allen’s list of confusables.
If you are not sure about any of these, look them up in the dictionary! It really is unforgivable for a professional journalist to mix up words with different meanings. And all who aspire to be excellent writers must have a very good knowledge of the traditional meanings of all the words they use in their news scripts. Only when you know the technical meaning of a word that is in transition can you make a deliberate and informed choice about whether to use it in the modern way. Most editors advise journalists not to pre-empt any changes of meaning. Using words in a precise and fairly traditional way upsets no-one, and will bring greater respect from some in the audience.
Language is as capable of obscuring the truth as it is of revealing it.
(Tom Stoppard, Professional Foul, television play, 1977)
If we want our scripts to be clear and easily understood, it is important to avoid all risk of ambiguity. I’m sure most readers will know some of Fleet Street’s legendary headline ambiguities.
Councillors To Act on Strip Shows
Women Who Smoke Have Lighter Children
and the wartime classics:
Eisenhower Flies Back To Front
Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans
Try not to join this hall of fame. In broadcasting, it’s surprisingly easy to write something on paper that seems to mean something else when read out loud. A BBC radio headline spoke of ‘… a promise of money to rescue the Scottish steel industry from the recently formed Lanarkshire Development Agency’. An embarrassed TV presenter made it on to YouTube in 2009 with his headline, ‘This is BBC World News. I’m Jonathan Charles. Kept hidden for almost two decades and forced to bear children …’. The risk of ambiguity is another reason to read your script aloud before it gets to air-time. Usually any danger of misunderstanding will be avoided by a very precise use of phrases and sentence construction.
Accurate reporting in a crisp, concise style leaves no room for imprecision. Facts are golden, and we should ensure that every script we write has plenty of key facts. But quite frequently we are not sure whether a fact is a fact. ‘Eighty thousand people marched through central London today …’ Did you count them? Organisers of marches tend to exaggerate the numbers. It is always a good idea to attribute such so-called facts. ‘The organisers say that eighty thousand joined the march. The police put the figure at fifty thousand. Certainly it was a strong show of opposition to the bill, and sent a clear message to Downing Street …’ Attributing information to the source is good journalism. It may take a few seconds longer, but it will mean that your script carries complete credibility with all who hear it, including those who were on that march.
Sometimes our routine use of journalistic phrases can blur or even distort the facts. For example, when we are told that something ‘had to be’ done, it is not necessarily so. ‘The area was evacuated’ is fact. ‘The area had to be evacuated’ is an assumption. And if we report, ‘The police had to open fire to quell the rioters’, it is highly contentious.
The river burst its banks.
Did it? The river probably ‘overflowed its banks’.
The police are stepping up their search for the missing schoolgirls.
Have they brought in more officers overnight, or are they really ‘continuing’ the search?
Coming up next, all the business news from around the world.
All of it? Really?
This may seem like nit-picking, but most experienced editors in news and current affairs want their journalists to be able to write extremely precisely, avoiding ambiguities, exaggerations, generalisations and vague pieces of journalese.
It is a firm principle of objective journalism that the source of any piece of information or assertion should be made clear if there could be any doubt about it. ‘According to witnesses three men burst into the pub …’ ‘The Department of Health says that hospital waiting lists are down for the third month running … ’
In print journalism, the information or assertion tends to come first, with the attribution afterwards. ‘Hospital waiting lists are down for the third month running, according to figures released by the Department of Health.’ In broadcasting, we should normally identify the source of the assertion before making it, for two reasons. First, the spoken assertion from a trusted news presenter carries great conviction. The immediate impression will be that this is unquestionably true, even though the viewers or listeners are in no position to make a judgement on the validity of the assertion until they know where it comes from. We should not write, ‘HRT is the modern equivalent of thalidomide, and could be causing 20,000 deaths from breast cancer in Britain every year, according to a medical safety expert in Germany.’
The second reason for putting the source first is that we usually speak that way. You would be unlikely to say, ‘I am a lazy good-for-nothing who can’t write for toffee, and who should be working in a post room, not a newsroom. That’s the view of my little sister.’ It’s much more natural to say, ‘My little sister thinks I’m useless, etc.’
This is particularly important when you are quoting someone directly. Newspapers regularly put the quote first: ‘I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later’, said President Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. In broadcasting, it just doesn’t work. Listeners must know who was saying something before they hear what was said.
Sometimes even the vocabulary we use has to have some form of attribution. Elsewhere in this book, there is advice on the need to attribute words such as ‘terrorist’ or ‘racist’. It is inadvisable for a scriptwriter to put into the mouth of the newsreader a contentious phrase such as ‘the war against terror’ without either attributing it, for example, ‘… to what Mrs Clinton called “the war against terror”’, or at the very least ‘… the so-called war against terror”’.
Accuracy in the way names and titles are written is paramount if you don’t want the credibility of your service to be eroded. It’s not too difficult to avoid irritating errors once you are aware of the main pitfalls. But there are quite a few traps for the unwary.
The higher levels of the British establishment tend to be the danger zones, with the church, the military, the aristocracy and the judiciary insisting on the preservation of traditional usages. Here are a few examples.
• Law Lords: Lord Brown
• Appeal Court Judges: Lord Justice Brown
• High Court Judges: Mr Justice Brown (even though they are normally Knights or Dames)
• Circuit Judges: Judge Brown (sitting in either the Crown Court or County Court); when two judges have the same surname, the forename of the junior is given: Judge Brown and Judge Jane Brown
Note that Stipendiary Magistrates are now called District Judges, just like the County Court District Judges, who used to be called Registrars.
There is full guidance on this on the Ministry of Justice website: www.judiciary.gov.uk/about_judiciary/forms_of_address/index.htm Juries return a verdict; the Coroner records a verdict. In civil cases, the parties are the claimant (formally the plaintiff) and the defendant. But note that the legal system in Scotland is quite separate, and has a host of different names (see page 70).
When using ‘Reverend’, we should use ‘The’ and a Christian name: The Reverend John Smith or The Reverend Jane Smith, rather than Reverend Smith or The Reverend Smith. After the first mention, they can be called Mr Smith or Miss/Mrs Smith (see note on ‘Ms’ in spoken English, below). Or in the Roman Catholic Church, Father Smith. Personally, I think ‘Reverend Smith’ is so widely used that it does not cause much offence, but I know others disagree. Certainly it is satisfying to get it precisely right. If in doubt, you can refer to Crockford’s Clerical Dictionary.
Members of the armed forces are rightly annoyed when we get regimental titles wrong. For example, The Royal Fusiliers (now incorrect) was one of five regiments amalgamated to form The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, which is what we must say.
The Last Post is sounded, not played. The RAF does not have planes, it has aircraft. And in the Royal Navy, submarines are not ships; they are boats.
Medals are conferred on, or awarded to, members of the military; not given to them. Civilians are not given a Knighthood or a Peerage, they receive it, or they are made a Peer or a Knight, or a Dame. (As far as I know, there is no such thing as receiving a Damehood.) People do not get a CBE, OBE or MBE, they are appointed.
Titles of nobility are, in descending order, Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount and Baron. It makes life a great deal simpler if we call all peers Lord and all peeresses Lady. This means we do not have to worry whether they are a viscount or a marquess, or if their wife is a baroness or countess (wives of earls). ‘Lady Thatcher’ and ‘Baroness Thatcher’ are equally acceptable. The Times Guide to English Style and Usage takes the view that the full title is used first, with Lord or Lady used thereafter, which is a quite widely followed policy in the press, and would work in broadcasting. Perhaps it’s best to use ‘Lord’ if we are reporting something relating to the person’s position in the upper house, and ‘Marquess’ (or whatever) if we are reporting trouble with the upkeep of their country estate. This does not apply to Dukes and Duchesses, whose titles do not change; for example, the Duke of Westminster is not called Lord Westminster.
But it is also very important to give consistently accurate titles to lesser mortals. Every radio station, TV news service or online site should have a guide to house style, which establishes an agreed format for such things as the use of titles. Most broadcasters in Britain follow the BBC style of Joseph Bloggs for the first use, and Mr Bloggs thereafter. (It’s not so many years ago that Radio Four was using Mr Joseph Bloggs, but that sounds pretty old-fashioned now.) With women, it has become a little trickier in recent years, with more women using the title Ms, which some people don’t actually say because they don’t know how to pronounce it, and which some women dislike. Normally you will know if it is Mrs Bloggs or Miss Bloggs. If you don’t, try to avoid the ‘Ms’ usage, which is not widely used in spoken English and is difficult to say clearly, by using the full name; or find out!
Another relatively recent change in broadcasting has been the use of titles with the names of people charged with crimes or appearing in court. This follows guidelines issued to judges and magistrates. These pointed out that, ‘Stand up Bloggs!’ is rude, reeks of a past class structure, and also seems to imply guilt, when the defendant is innocent until proved guilty. Even today, some journalists seem uncomfortable with the use of titles in serious cases. But I am certain that it is right to say, ‘Mr Huntley appeared in court …’ or ‘Mr Shipman’s solicitor …’ until the defendant has been proved guilty, at which point they lose their courtesy title as well as their liberty. I think this even applies to sport personalities, who by tradition are known by their surname. If a footballer is charged with assault outside a bar, for example, I think he should be termed ‘Mr Woodgate’, with a proper title just like any other defendant.
Again, it is a matter of house style whether you use foreign titles with foreign names: Señor Barroso; Monsieur Sarkozy. The BBC style is to use the English version: Mr Zapatero; Mr Burlusconi, usually after first using their full name. Most other broadcasters do the same, though some rather inconsistently.
In broadcasting, journalists sometimes have to write an introduction to a live interview, or conduct interviews themselves. The convention for news and current affairs programmes is one of courteous formality, when title and surname are used.
Joining me now is Clare Turner from Amnesty – Good morning Miss Turner.
Only children are normally addressed by their first name in serious factual programmes. But the recent move towards more accessible and less formal news has led to more use of first names.
Louise Christian is the detainee’s solicitor. Good morning Louise …’ (BBC Breakfast).
‘Joining me now is Dr Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian legislator and human rights activist. Hanan, what’s your reaction … ?’ (Larry King Live, CNN).
I dislike this usage in mainstream news programmes. It can sound patronising, especially when it is usually women who receive the first-name treatment. It certainly sounds as though the interviewer and interviewee are old friends, which can easily damage a channel’s reputation for impartiality. Some programmes may deliberately adopt a friendlier style, but it should be done consistently. For most news programmes, the formal styles of address are better.
As for names of organisations or offices, it’s just a question of noticing what is right and taking care. Here are a few that are sometimes used inaccurately:
• St John Ambulance Brigade, not St John’s.
• Register office, not registry office.
• Scouts and Guides, not Boy Scouts or Girl Guides. (In the USA there are also Girl Scouts.) Cub Scouts have replaced Wolf Cubs. Scout Leaders have replaced Scoutmasters.
• Trooping the Colour, not Trooping of the Colour.
• An Ambassador to a country, but in a capital: the British Ambassador to the United States; the British Ambassador in Washington.
• The United Kingdom does not have ambassadors in Commonwealth countries, it has High Commissioners, who work in High Commissions.
• The Anglican Church has different branches: the Church of England; the Church of Ireland; but the Episcopal Church in Scotland; the Church in Wales.
• Unfair dismissal cases used to be heard in industrial tribunals; now they are employment tribunals.
• The British Athletics Association became the British Athletic Association, then simply British Athletics.
Abbreviations and acronyms should be used with care. If you are not sure that a very high proportion of listeners will identify the organisation immediately, you should use an explanatory phrase. Some initials are universally well known. The great majority of listeners and viewers in Britain will probably know NATO, NASA, the CIA, the TUC, the BBC and ITV.
But very many more acronyms are not well known. It is easy for journalists who write about many organisations each day to forget that consumers have to dredge up these initials from memory and work them out instantly if they are going to understand the story. I guess that not everyone immediately knows the MOD (Ministry of Defence), or the CBI (Confederation of British Industry), or the BAA (British Airports Authority). They are certainly going to struggle with Nacro (originally the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, NACRO). If your story is about a Nacro report, you must use an explanatory phrase such as ‘the charity that helps ex-offenders resettle’ or ‘the charity that works with individuals at risk of getting involved in crime’, depending on the subject of the story.
It is worth noting that ACAS is not the government’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, as it is sometimes described. It is independent, and guards that independent status jealously.
As a general rule, it is poor writing to clutter a script with abbreviations or acronyms, and if there’s any doubt about instant recognition of the organisation, take a couple of seconds to explain what it is.
It is quite common in conversation to hear a trade name being used to mean a general type of product. It is not good journalistic practice to reproduce this on the air. Many people might say, ‘I’ve just hoovered the hall and landing’, and the verb ‘to hoover’ is in the dictionary; but all the people who make or sell Dyson, Panasonic, Electrolux or the countless other types of vacuum cleaner may be rather miffed to hear their rival, Hoover, being plugged in this way on the news: for example, ‘Forensic teams have been hoovering up every scrap of evidence …’ (Signal Radio). There is also the occasional risk of legal action in using registered names inaccurately. A story about someone being electrocuted while hoovering the landing might land you in court if it turned out not that no Hoover was involved.
Here are a few commonly used registered names, which we should try to avoid using in an imprecise way.
Outward Bound is an interesting example. It is the name of a long-established company that runs adventure excursions. On several occasions, it has successfully sued broadcasters and newspapers for using the Outward Bound name incorrectly in reports about accidents happening during outdoor-pursuits events run by other organisations.
One subject that provokes a large number of complaints to broadcasters every year is the inaccurate use of place names, and insensitivity to the audience’s sense of place or nationality. Inaccurate geography seriously erodes a news organisation’s authority; it also makes the broadcaster seem remote to the listener or viewer. And often the newsroom is indeed remote from many of its target audience. In Britain, most national news programmes come from London, and are written by people who live in and around London. Some of these journalists have never lived anywhere else. If you are listening away from the capital, in Towcester, for example, and you hear your home town pronounced ‘teow-sester’ (as has happened on BBC radio), you will be contemptuous and unforgiving.
It is very important for journalists to have a decent grasp of the geography of their own country, and at the very least, a basic knowledge of the world. Audiences in different parts of the UK see their country from different perspectives. Their lives have been shaped by different cultural backgrounds, and different civic or political institutions. Political devolution to the Parliament in Scotland, and to the Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland, has increased diversity.
If you are going to work for an international channel or agency, such as the BBC World Service, BBC World News, CNN International, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Reuters TV, APTN, Euronews, Al-Jazeera Europe or Sky News, you should get a good, up-to-date atlas, such as The Times Concise Atlas of the World, and study it!
There are complexities in both the geographical and geopolitical landscapes of the British Isles. Journalists working in Britain should not be baffled by their own country. Here are a few pointers.
• The British Isles is a geographical term describing the group of islands off the north-west coast of mainland Europe. It comprises the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, plus the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
• Britain, or Great Britain, is England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands.
• The United Kingdom is Britain and Northern Ireland, and for this reason is becoming more widely preferred to Great Britain. Most editors in broadcasting advise scriptwriters to use the full ‘United Kingdom’ rather than ‘the UK’. After all, we would not start a story with, ‘The President of the US …’ but with ‘The President of the United States …’ ‘UK-wide’ is hardly the way we speak. Better to say, ‘across the country’. Better still to say ‘across the United Kingdom’, because words such as country, nation and capital mean different things in different places.
• The word Briton for a person who comes from Britain is not in general use – unless you are talking about the Ancient Britons – and is to be avoided. ‘Two people from Britain are thought to be among those injured in the explosion …’ is much better than the marginally shorter ‘Two Britons …’. If the information is available, it is always best to be as precise as possible: ‘Two men, one from the London area and one from Wales …’.
And it is worth remembering that our society is multi-ethnic, and extremely mobile. Many people do not live in the nation of their birth. People residing in England are not necessarily ‘English’. There are believed to be about 750,000 Scots people and 550,000 Welsh people living in England. One in twelve people living in Scotland is English-born. In Wales, the figure is one in five. So we should be careful not to make sweeping statements in our writing. It is more accurate to say ‘People in Scotland are voting today …’ rather than ‘The Scots are voting today …’.
In general terms, journalists writing for a British audience should always remember that each listener and viewer has a sense of place, and views the UK from their own perspective. When the government introduced devolution just before the turn of the twenty-first century, the BBC issued its journalists with a forty-page guide called The Changing UK, which listed the powers and structures of the new political bodies, but also took the opportunity to address the lingering and irritating problem of insensitive writing that ignores the differences in sense-of-place. Here is an extract from the guidance.
Our audience will be deeply interested in any item on a programme about the place where they live. However they will be offended by any sloppiness in how we describe where it is. We must be accurate and consistent. Few people have a perfect geographical knowledge of the UK. For most of our audience, the further away a place is from where they live, the less likely they are to know where it is. We must strike a balance between informing part of our audience while not patronising another section.
We would never say ‘Plymouth in England’, because England is a large place and that is too imprecise. By the same standard we should never refer to Inverness as ‘Inverness in Scotland’. If necessary, say which area a place is in, and if it is remote or little-known, place it as ‘near’ the closest well-known town. But again, be consistent. If we would never say ‘Halifax near Leeds’, we should never say ‘Hamilton near Glasgow’.
This problem of locating a town is brought into sharp focus when broadcasters have a house style that uses pay-offs at the end of each report, as the BBC and ITN have done for many years. There has been a tendency to use very specific locations when reporting from London, and very general ones when reporting from other parts of the country.
Jane Smith, BBC News, Chiswick Magistrates Court
Jane Smith, BBC News, Scotland
It would be better and more consistent to say:
Jane Smith, BBC News, Chiswick Magistrates Court in west London
Jane Smith, BBC News, the High Court in Edinburgh
On television, the use of a simple map in the introduction can help to locate a town or city without the script having to remind us, for example, where exactly Lockerbie is. A few years ago, television news programmes used maps much more than they do now. I don’t know why maps have fallen out of fashion – perhaps laziness or lack of time. Or perhaps it is because using a map of a fairly well known place can appear to be stupid or patronising to those who live in that area, so it is easier not to take that risk. Personally, I am sure that simple maps help many viewers who aren’t sure about precise locations.
Journalists working in England should remember that many familiar organisations do not operate across the whole of the UK. If the story is in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, check that you have the correct name of the organisation.
For example, the Football Association (FA) is not called the English Football Association, but it is separate from the Scottish and Welsh Football Associations, while Northern Ireland has the Irish Football Association. (The Republic of Ireland has the Football Association of Ireland.) Depending on the story, it might be worth adding a line to clarify that the FA runs football in England.
Do not assume that a group that has ‘National’ in its name has a remit across the UK. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has a sister organisation in Scotland called Children First. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) is the biggest teaching union in England and Wales, but it has no remit in Scotland, where the largest teaching union is the Educational Institute of Scotland. In Northern Ireland, the biggest teaching union is the NAS/UWT.
Even the ‘national curriculum’ in schools isn’t really national. It doesn’t apply at all in Scotland, and the Welsh version is slightly different because the Welsh language is included. It’s best to talk about the English National Curriculum or the Welsh National Curriculum.
We should take care when writing stories about trends. ‘House prices leapt by nearly twenty per cent in the past six months …’ is a pretty misleading start to a story if you are hearing it in Scotland, and discover in the fourth sentence that prices in London and the south-east are soaring while in Scotland they are hardly moving. Trends often have wide variations across the country, so we should try to report them as precisely as possible.
School holidays are often taken at different times in various parts of Britain. So beware of the generalised introduction, ‘As our children prepare to go back to school next week …’. In Scotland, where they tend to have summer holidays earlier, they may have been back for a fortnight already. And sometimes bank holidays are different, a point that can be missed in travel reports.
The Chair of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, Blair Jenkins, was previously BBC Scotland’s Head of News and Current Affairs, and Scottish Television’s Director of Broadcasting within ITV. He thinks reporting of the UK has improved a great deal.
When I worked in London 25 years ago, BBC journalists just didn’t understand the need to distinguish between ‘British’ and ‘English’. Editors would be puzzled when, after some trouble at England football matches abroad was attributed to British fans, the switchboard would be jammed with complaints from other countries in the UK. They just didn’t get it.
I remember as senior duty editor on the Nine o’clock News one night, a sub-editor had written a story about job losses in Dundee and was using a map to show viewers where the city was. I asked him if he would have used a map for Brighton. ‘No’, he said, ‘because everyone knows where Brighton is …’.
Nowadays a great deal of thought is given to getting not just the facts right but also the tone. We do still run into problems when things are described as ‘national’, or happening ‘all over the country’, when in fact they’re not. People in Scotland feel slightly dislocated when Yorkshire or Lancashire are referred to as ‘the north’ in a UK broadcast. They’re certainly in the north of England, but to someone in Inverness, places like Manchester and Bradford are definitely in the south!
The main advice, as always, is to think about the audience you are serving. If it is a UK-wide audience, you have to report from a UK perspective.
The structures of government in the United Kingdom have changed significantly with devolution. And the devolved authorities have different powers in the ‘nations’ of the UK. The Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly can make their own laws. In 2006, the Welsh Assembly gained more legislative powers, but Westminster approval is required in some key areas. The Scottish Parliament can raise taxes; Wales cannot.
When writing stories for a domestic audience, it’s wise to keep in mind how it will sound to audiences in the different nations, and whether or not your story is accurate across the UK. Never assume that an issue affects everyone in the same way. Health, education, transport, agriculture, fisheries, environment, planning, economic development, social services and sport are just some of the areas of life that are organised differently in each nation. So we should make clear who is affected by a story or an issue, normally in the first sentence, and even in headlines.
Teachers in England and Wales are to be balloted on industrial action …
NHS consultants in Scotland are being offered a new kind of contract …
University students in England and Wales could face higher tuition fees …
Some journalists working in England still don’t seem to have grasped that they do things rather differently in Scotland, such as running their own legal system, as well as most of the public services (in many people’s opinion more efficiently than in England), with wide powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Forgetting these differences can infuriate the Scots. So if a story is about water authorities in England and Wales, don’t change it to ‘Britain’s water authorities’.
Devolution has drawn more attention to these differences, but it is not a new problem for writers south of the border. A few years ago, when the first English councils started setting their poll-tax levels, Radio and TV in England regularly ignored the fact that Scotland had gone through it all a year before. ‘Derbyshire has become the first council in the country to set its community charge rate above the government limit’ (BBC Radio Four). No, it was the first in England.
There is some confusion about these UK terms. The ‘country’ or the ‘nation’ can mean either the whole of the United Kingdom, or one of its constituent nations. After devolution, the BBC renamed its Regional Directorate ‘Nations and Regions’, because there is now a clear difference between an English region, such as the West Midlands, and a nation such as Scotland. My advice to scriptwriters is to be aware of this possible confusion, and try to be specific. For example, ‘Sterling is the first Council in Britain/Scotland to ban smoking in restaurants’.
As Blair Jenkins has indicated, a particular irritant for viewers and listeners in Scotland, and indeed in Wales and Northern Ireland, is the habit of confusing national sport teams, or not to give proper credit to the individual nations. During one Commonwealth Games, headlines on BBC Radio News proudly announced that England had won another gold and two more bronze medals, ignoring a silver won by Scotland. And if scriptwriters are foolish enough to describe hooligan England football supporters as British fans, they are likely to be thrown over Hadrian’s Wall to explain in person to the outraged five million Scots who seem to email or phone the broadcasters whenever it happens. They are England fans, or followers of England.
When locating a story in Scotland, we should be precise. We would be unlikely to write ‘Worcester in England’, or ‘Leeds in England’, so should avoid ‘Perth in Scotland’ or ‘East Kilbride in Scotland’. Try to indicate the county or region. ‘Central Scotland’ is still acceptable, despite the scrapping of the Central administrative region.
The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh doesn’t have a Prime Minister, it has a First Minister. The different ministers should be referred to as, for example, ‘The Minister for Health in Scotland’ or ‘Scotland’s Health Minister’, to distinguish clearly from their counterparts at Westminster. The initials MSP, for Members of the Scottish Parliament, are still not very familiar south of the border, so using the full title is advisable in broadcasts outside Scotland.
It’s also a good idea to use the full title of The Secretary of State for Scotland, rather than ‘The Scottish Secretary’, to ensure that the Westminster base and cabinet role are immediately clear to the audience.
The political spectrum in Scotland is very different from that in the rest of the UK. At the time of writing, following the creation of a Conservative-led coalition at Westminster, there is only one Conservative MP in Scotland. So it is particularly important to make sure audiences know what is meant by the ruling party and the opposition when reporting politics in Scotland.
A major difference between Scotland and the other nations is its separate legal system. As we all know, crime and courts play a big part in journalism, so news writers in the UK should have a broad understanding of the main differences in the Scottish legal system. Here are just a few pointers.
• There are no Magistrates’ Courts or Crown Courts in Scotland. The lowest Scottish criminal court is the District Court. Most criminal cases are dealt with in the Sheriff Court (note that it is called Sheriff Court, not Sheriff’s Court).
• Don’t talk about barristers. Lawyers appearing in higher Scottish courts are called advocates.
• Don’t talk about a defendant in a criminal case. He or she is the accused. In a civil case, they are the defender (and the plaintiff is the pursuer).
• A jury in Scotland can choose to return a verdict of not proven, which is the equivalent of an acquittal. In a criminal case, the jury is normally composed of fifteen people.
• There is no Crown Prosecution Service in Scotland. The Procurator Fiscal, or his or her Fiscal Depute, is the prosecutor in a Sheriff Court. The Procurator Fiscal also investigates complaints against the police; there is no Police Complaints Authority.
• There is no injunction in Scotland. The equivalent is an interdict.
• There are no inquests in Scotland; instead there will be a fatal accident enquiry.
• There is no offence of arson; it is called wilful fire-raising.
See www.copfs.gov.uk for more information on the Scottish justice system.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, there are GCSE exams, normally taken in the fifth year of secondary school when pupils are 16; and A-levels, taken when they are 17 or 18. In Scotland, the equivalents were Standard Grades and Intermediates, normally taken at 16; Higher Grades or Highers, taken at 17; and Advanced Highers, taken at 18. But the Scottish government has announced that from 2014 there will be a new national exam to replace Standard Grades and Intermediates, with compulsory tests in numeracy and literacy. Highers are to remain.
Most university degrees in Scotland require a four-year course, rather than the three-year standard course found elsewhere in the UK. And they have a completely different policy on tuition fees.
People living in Wales will scoff if they hear, ‘Camarthen in Wales’ or Port Talbot in Wales’. Use the four principal regions, North Wales, Mid Wales, West Wales and South Wales, if the town isn’t big enough to be easily recognised. Or use the names of the twenty-two unitary authorities, which appeared in the last local government reorganisation. (Note that Clwyd, Dyfed and Gwent no longer exist as authorities, though they are still widely used as names of regions. For example, the South Wales Argus still uses in headlines, ‘Gwent Man Injured’ or ‘Gwent House Prices Falling’).
The full title of the assembly in Cardiff is The National Assembly for Wales, though it is usually called The Welsh Assembly. It has a First Secretary rather than a First Minister, and the equivalents of the Ministers in Scotland are called Secretaries, as in ‘The Welsh Assembly Secretary for Health’. The elected representatives are called Welsh Assembly Members.
When talking about the Secretary of State for Wales at Westminster, we should beware of the possible confusion between ‘Welsh Secretary’ and ‘First Secretary for Wales’, so the full title of the Secretary of State for Wales is preferable.
Incidentally, hardly anyone calls Wales ‘The Principality’ in normal speech.
Reporting events in Northern Ireland places particular demands on journalists. People in Northern Ireland are understandably sensitive to ill-chosen language, and offended by inaccuracies. To some ears, certain words and expressions suggest a political point of view. It is important for broadcasters to use terms that are factual and neutral.
Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, it is not part of Great Britain. Some people in Northern Ireland regard themselves as British; others regard themselves as Irish.
It is widely acceptable to call it The Province as a second reference, though historically, Ulster was one of four provinces of Ireland, and in that context Ulster includes three counties in the Republic, as well as the six counties that make up Northern Ireland. For this reason, it is unwise to use ‘Ulster’ as a synonym, even if some interviewees do so. ‘The Six Counties’ is used at times by nationalists and republicans to emphasise the historical separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the island. The phrase represents a political viewpoint, so impartial journalists should not use it. The best advice is to stick to ‘Northern Ireland’, with ‘The Province’ possible as a subsequent reference.
The North of Ireland is a description sometimes used by nationalists in preference to Northern Ireland; again, this makes a political point, and should be avoided by journalists. But it is widely acceptable to talk about ‘the North’ when referring to Northern Ireland, and ‘the South’ when referring to the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland can be referred to as The Irish Republic, or even The Republic, where the context is clear. But if you are writing in English as opposed to Irish, don’t call it Eire.
The name of Londonderry/Derry is probably the best known example of terminology that can divide the communities. Broadly speaking, nationalists call the city Derry while unionists call it Londonderry. The BBC practice, which has been followed by most other broadcasters for many years, is to call the city Londonderry on the first use, and Derry thereafter. But note that the local authority is called Derry City Council.
Journalists must understand the main points of the political scene in Northern Ireland, and get the terminology right in their scripts. When it is not suspended, the Northern Ireland Assembly sits at Stormont in Belfast, and is run by an Executive Committee headed by a First Minister. Elections are every four years and use the single transferable vote system. Those elected become Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, or Northern Ireland Assembly Members. Ministers are referred to as ‘The Health Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly’ or, more usually, ‘The Northern Ireland Health Minister’.
It is important to describe a person’s political position accurately, and according to the codes that have gained acceptance in recent years. But journalists should not refer to someone’s religion unless it is strictly relevant to the story. The Northern Ireland community is broadly split into two groups, defined by their political affiliations and religious beliefs. But it would be a mistake to characterise the political divisions simply as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants. It is more complicated than that. There are significant sections of the population who do not regard themselves as having an affiliation to either community. And some will regard themselves as nationalists or unionists, but will not espouse any particular religious beliefs. Always try to establish how each person in a political story would like be described.
Here are some suggestions on terminology that might help you write stories about Northern Ireland.
• Unionists: This is used to describe people who want to maintain Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom. Unionists are predominantly, though not exclusively, Protestant, usually from one of three main denominations, Presbyterian, Church of Ireland (Anglican), or Methodist. The DUP and the UUP are the main Unionist parties.
• Loyalist: the term comes from those who are loyal to the Crown, and tends to refer to people with very strongly held views, some of whom operate outside the electoral system. The Orange Order is a legitimate loyalist organisation. But ‘loyalist’ has also been used over the years to describe paramilitary organisations such as the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Ulster Volunteer Force, so the word is weighted towards the more extreme unionist organisations.
• Nationalist: describes those who want a united Ireland. Nationalists are likely to be Catholics, but you shouldn’t assume this. For many years, the largest nationalist party was the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), who consistently rejected violent methods. After the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Sinn Féin gained considerable support in the nationalist community, and in 2003 became the largest nationalist party.
• Republican: this term has come to mean those who also want to see a united Ireland, but not always through exclusively democratic means. They are generally regarded as more hard-line in their approach, but this doesn’t mean that all people who call themselves Republican condone violence. Sinn Féin is described as a Republican party. Historically it had close links with the IRA, but independent journalists should never refer to the party as ‘Sinn Féin–IRA’, even though some Unionist politicians still do so. The IRA is an illegal organisation. Sinn Féin has many elected representatives. Take care when talking about people living in the Republic of Ireland, most of whom regard themselves as Republicans but do not condone violence. It’s best to reserve the word for Republicans in Northern Ireland.
Since the IRA put its weapons ‘beyond use’ in 2005, the loyalist paramilitary organisations decommissioned their weapons in 2009, and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) followed suit in 2010, there has been a continuing threat of violence from relatively small groups known as ‘dissident republicans’ – such as the ‘Real IRA’ and ‘Continuity IRA’. We should always ensure viewers and listeners know these are self-appointed titles; for example, ‘the police suspect that dissident republicans from the so-called Real IRA are behind the shooting’.
Listeners and viewers in parts of England can also be sensitive about their sense of place, particularly if they hear the kind of ‘up north’, ‘in the sticks’, or ‘out in the provinces’ expressions occasionally used by self-styled London sophisticates or home counties types. Journalists working in London and writing news for national channels should always remember that most of the audience does not live in London. To write, ‘The Prime Minister will be on his way up to Leeds tomorrow …’ or ‘The Home Secretary is coming back from Blackpool today …’ makes sense only for listeners in the capital.
In general terms, scripts for national or international news bulletins should talk about ‘the west of England’ or ‘the north of England’, rather than ‘the west’ or ‘the north’. It’s helpful to be aware of changes to the unitary authorities. For example, Avon, Cleveland, Humberside, and Hereford and Worcester have been abolished. In my view, there is such widespread confusion about the structure of local government that there is no real problem in using the names of regions that people recognise, but that have no technical existence, such as the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, or Humberside.
More than thirty-five years after the United Kingdom joined the European Community, I am dismayed that some broadcast journalists still seem to think that the UK is not part of Europe. Radio and television scripts frequently compare British healthcare, crime figures or social habits with those ‘in Europe’. This is sloppy scripting. It should be ‘in the rest of Europe’, or maybe ‘in mainland Europe’, or ‘on the Continent’.
Some Europhiles seem to think this sloppiness is evidence of a grand anti-Europe conspiracy in the media. I think phraseology suggesting that Britain is outside Europe is much more likely to have been picked up subconsciously from the attitudes and vocabularies we read every day in the overwhelmingly anti-European British press. The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily Express, London Evening Standard and many more national and regional newspapers regularly use language indicating that we Brits are not part of Europe (though I don’t think the little-Englander terminology is quite as blatant as it was in the time of the famous headline in The Times, ‘Fog in Channel: Continent Isolated’). It may be quite tempting for broadcast journalists to repeat this kind of phraseology, but I think they should resist the temptation. We should use language which is correct and neutral, not weighted with either pro-EU or anti-EU sentiment.
So broadcast journalists should not talk about ‘going to Europe for our holidays’. Say ‘taking holidays in Europe’, or be more specific depending on the story. ‘Britain’s trade with Europe’ should be ‘Britain’s trade with the rest of Europe’. And talk of ‘the Europeans’ should certainly be avoided. Usually it is meaningless. Do we mean the Germans or the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Poles? The use of the word Brussels to mean the European Union is particularly vague, and is irritating to many people, especially when we hear that ‘Brussels believes …’ or ‘Brussels has issued a directive …’, with the phrase sometimes followed by an exaggerated claim of bureaucratic lunacy, written by a journalist who clearly does not know how the EU works.
And the word Europe should not be used too often as a short version of ‘the European Union’. Europe is a continent, which includes several countries that are not members of the EU, such as Norway and Switzerland.
When the UK was about to hold the presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, the British media magazine Press Gazette asked me to conduct a survey of senior broadcast news editors and producers, to establish how much, or how little, they knew about the EU. The results were, to quote the magazine, ‘shocking’. No-one could name the President of the European Parliament, few could name the member states of the EU, and fewer still could spot the odd one out among The Council of Ministers, The Council of Europe, and The European Council. (In case you are wondering, The Council of Europe is the odd one out; it is a completely separate body from the EU, older and larger, based in Strasbourg, and concerned with the promotion of human rights, democracy and European cultural values.)
Over the years, many journalists have found it difficult to write about the European Union. It can seem to be a boring story, with no good pictures for television, with complicated procedures which take a long time to produce results, and with few dramatic moments of decision or confrontation. It has been easier for political correspondents to report the EU through the prism of British politics, as a subject that splits parties and brings down prime ministers, rather than an important subject in its own right.
Nowadays, there seems to be a growing recognition that journalist must understand the EU better. Some writers openly admit that ‘Europe’ has not been reported well since the United Kingdom joined the EEC in 1973. Many com mentators argue that the Union has become one of the great projects in European history, driving the economic revival of the continent after the devastation of the Second World War, and making the idea of war between the nations of Europe unthinkable for the first time in history. Yet they remain ill-informed about the way it operates.
In the twenty-first century, a growing number of issues are being addressed at the European level, including the attempts to revive economies after the world recession of 2008–10, globalised business and leisure, action against climate change, anti-terrorism measures, mass migration, a changing relationship with the USA and China, and the need to reform agriculture and fisheries. Many European laws already have primacy over national laws, and with the ratification if the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, there will be more in the future. The EU is a divisive issue. Is it a threat to national sovereignty? Is it hugely wasteful? All young journalists entering the profession should try to understand the EU well. At the very least, they should use accurate language when reporting it. Here are a few reminders.
• There is a triangle of power centres running the EU: the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament.
• Council meetings are the occasions when the member states get together to agree policies. The Council of Ministers is the name of the ministerial-level meetings, held usually in Brussels but sometimes in Strasbourg or Luxembourg. For example, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer attends the regular meetings of the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers (known in EU circles as the Ecofin meeting, but never to be described that way on air!). The ‘Council of Ministers’ may be an unfamiliar title to many people, so it is best to write ‘European Farm Ministers meeting in Brussels …’ or … ‘A meeting of European Union Environment Ministers …’. When the heads of government meet (usually four times a year), it is a meeting of The European Council, which is generally described as a European Summit.
• The European Commission is often described as the civil service of the EU. It certainly is the administration, but it has more political influence than the Whitehall civil service, which carries out the policies of the UK government of the day. The Commission, based in Brussels, oversees the enforcement of EU laws and proposes new ones, attempting to negotiate directives that will be acceptable to all member states. EU Commissioners hold portfolios that broadly match the ministries in the member states, and attend their Council meetings to try to push through agreements. On appointment, EU Commissioners and the Commission President pledge not to represent their home country, but to work for the general good of the club of European nations.
• The European Parliament meets in plenary session in Strasbourg (in French Alsace, near the border with Germany), nearly every month, and holds five or six so-called mini-sessions in Brussels each year. In the past, the Parliament has been regarded as a talking shop with little real power. But successive treaties have given the directly elected body more powers. Now, following the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, a wide range of policy areas are subject to ‘co-decision’ between the Council of Ministers and the Parliament, in effect giving MEPs the right to veto some proposed legislation, as well as the annual EU budget and applications for EU membership. Also, the Parliament’s specialist committees have gained more influence in helping to formulate policies before the Commission puts forward proposed directives. Journalists should understand that the European Parliament does not have a government and an opposition like the British House of Commons. The horseshoe-shaped hemicycles in Strasbourg and Brussels group the conservative parties and the socialists in blocks, but the political spectrum is much more complex than the rather simplified despatch-box spats we are used to in Britain.
There are now three presidents within the EU – the President of the Commission, the President of the Parliament, and at the end of 2009 Herman Van Rompuy became the first President of the European Council. So it is important to give their full titles. No-one is ‘EU President’. The Lisbon Treaty also saw the first ‘High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’, Baroness Ashton. Her full title is a terrible mouthful and journalists immediately shortened it. The BBC website confidently announced her appointment as Europe’s first ‘Foreign Minister’, using quotation marks. But the UK specifically refused to accept that title, so I think it is best to avoid ‘Foreign Minister’ in scripts, as it is technically incorrect, and write the EU ‘Foreign Affairs Representative’ or ‘Foreign Policy Chief’ (favoured by many newspapers). Interestingly, the High Representative is also the first Vice President of the European Commission, and will have a large diplomatic staff at the Commission, so in effect has a foot in the previously separate camps of the Council and Commission, making the job unique in the EU structure.
In summary, when writing about the EU, we should be accurate about which part of the institution is making the news, and we should make sure that the audience understands as much as possible. It is extremely difficult to explain everything in every brief story. But it is not difficult to differentiate clearly between, for example, a proposal from the Commission, or an argument between the UK and France in a Council of Ministers’ meeting, or a vote at the European Parliament which will almost certainly turn a proposal into law.
The EU is much more open than many national governments, with a mass of information available on its Europa website, including minutes of meetings for those who are really interested (www.europa.eu). The European Journalism Centre, based in Maastricht, runs a useful site for journalists with references to other information sources (www.eu4journalists.com).
The various European courts can cause confusion. Two are institutions of the EU – the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Auditors.
• The European Court of Justice (sometimes called the European Court) is based in Luxembourg, and applies or interprets EU law.
• The European Court of Auditors is also based in Luxembourg, and independently scrutinises and adjudicates on the way the EU raises its income and spends the annual budget.
• The European Court of Human Rights is not connected with the EU, though confusingly it is based in Strasbourg, home of the European Parliament. It was set up by the Council of Europe, and applies the principles contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. Cases are first heard by the European Commission of Human Rights, which decides if they should be referred to the court.
• The International Court of Justice sits in The Hague and is part of the United Nations. It seeks to resolve disputes between states. It is sometimes called the ‘World Court’, a phrase I do not recommend. Stick to the correct title.
• Also in The Hague is the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is not part of the United Nations. The ICC is an independent organisation, established in 2002 under the Rome Statute ratified by 60 countries, with the aim of bringing to justice perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. Alongside it are tribunals set up by the UN Security Council to bring to justice individuals involved in specific conflicts, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). So take care over the names of these different judicial bodies, and don’t try to shorten them.
Accuracy and consistency in reporting the world are important for clarity and credibility. But when a city or country changes its name, it can be difficult to know if we should accept the change. After all, the British have anglicised foreign names throughout history, and we are unlikely to start calling Naples Napoli, Rome Roma or Porto Oporto, or pronouncing Paris the way the locals do.
But sometimes there are powerful diplomatic reasons for changes to be accepted. It took years for journalists to start calling the capital of the most populous nation on earth Beijing, and Peking continued to be used in parallel for some time. After India gained independence, many city authorities there applied to central government to abandon the colonial usages and revert to earlier names. Some changes have not been authorised. Some have caught on better than others. So, for example, the name Bombay, like Peking, appears to be a dead duck, apart from in names like the Bombay Stock Exchange. But at the time of writing, Bengaluru for Bangalore, and Kolkata for Calcutta, have not been adopted in the UK. My advice is that if the establishment accepts a change, by which I mean the Foreign Secretary speaking in the Commons, or government press releases, then we should accept that the change has taken place.
In general terms, journalists should be familiar with the main cities in all countries. They should be wary of common misconceptions. For example, the largest city is not necessarily the capital. The capital of Australia is Canberra, not Sydney. The capital of South Africa is Pretoria, not Johannesburg. In Nigeria, it’s Abuja, not Lagos. Confusingly, in The Netherlands, Amsterdam is the capital but The Hague is the seat of government. Incidentally, it is worth noting that the name ‘Holland’ applies only to two coastal provinces, called North Holland and South Holland. The Dutch live in The Netherlands, and prefer us to call their country by its correct name. The Dutch national football team is often called ‘Holland’ in English, but the official name that comes out of the hat in international competitions is ‘Netherlands’. A colleague working in Dutch television told me with feeling, ‘The Netherlands is correct. All over the world people use Holland, which is really incorrect!’
The use of numbers, fractions and percentages requires particular care in broadcasting. In print journalism, numbers stand out on the page and can be absorbed at the reader’s own pace. In a fast-moving radio or television bulletin, anything that requires the audience to make even the simplest calculation will be a challenge to many.
The first rule is not to litter your script with too many numbers, and to simplify them if at all possible. So ‘nearly 500’ is better than ‘485’. When ITV Digital went bankrupt, the losses were put at £1.2 billion. For most people this just means an unimaginably large amount of money, so ‘over a billion pounds’ is near enough.
The second rule is to understand precisely the nuances of maths, measurement and comparisons. If you write things that are ambiguous or inaccurate, the audience will be confused, irritated or baffled.
For example, always compare like with like. Do not say, ‘Half those polled said apples were their favourite fruit; twenty per cent preferred bananas, but only one in twelve voted for plums’. You are asking your audience to make instant calculations, and surveys show that a surprising number of people in Britain are very bad indeed at maths. Leaders of the retail trade complained recently that many trainee staff can’t work out a customer’s change without the help of a calculator. Our audiences certainly don’t listen or watch with calculators in their hands, so we must make it very easy. Personally I think that ‘a fifth of people questioned …’ is more understandable than ‘20 per cent …’, and ‘one in five …’ is even better.
Incidentally, when reporting interest-rate changes, some financial journalists insist on saying ‘half of one per cent’, whereas in ordinary conversation most people would say ‘a half per cent’, or even ‘half a per cent’. I understand that ‘per cent’ means ‘out of a hundred’, so half of one out of a hundred is technically correct, and ‘half of out of a hundred’ is not. Nevertheless I think that ‘half a per cent’ is in wide general use and is perfectly clear. Daniel Dodd, the Head of the BBC’s Business News Unit, agrees. ‘We don’t have a problem with the common usage.’
Using ‘double’ to mean twice as much is fine. But ‘triple’ is not used very widely. Most people would say ‘three times as many’. And some people aren’t quite sure what tripling means. President George W. Bush was quoted as saying, ‘We’ve tripled the amount of money – I believe it’s up from $50 million to $195 million available.’ He seemed to think that to triple a figure, you double it and then double it again, rather than multiply by three.
The use of the phrase ‘up to …’ is routinely deployed by salespeople and advertisers, usually to obfuscate or even mislead, rather than to clarify. ‘Up to 20 per cent off!’ might mean that a couple of lines are reduced by 20 per cent, but everything else in the sale has smaller reductions. Broadcast journalists should not use this technique to hype their stories. When BBC Radio 4 reported an incident on the London underground in 2003, the script said, ‘Most of the passengers were trapped for up to an hour and a half’. What on earth did that mean? I suspect it meant that the reporter did not know how long most of the passengers were trapped, but knew that no-one had been in the train for more than an hour and a half.
Generally, ‘up to’ is a phrase to avoid. ‘Up to five thousand took part in the march’ is vague and unhelpful. We should give the best estimate of the numbers and source it.
Sometimes our sources give us extremely vague information about numbers. ‘The police say a number of people were arrested in the raids …’ – you should try hard to indicate the kind of number we are talking about. ‘Several people’ is better if the number is thought to be in single figures. ‘Some weapons were found …’ is better than the official-speak versions, ‘a number of weapons …’ or ‘a quantity of weapons’. Equally, ‘a percentage of the shareholders expressed dissatisfaction with the board’ tells the audience nothing about the level of dissatisfaction.
We should be very careful about vague statements that clearly are designed to impress. ‘A wave of arrests in dawn raids across the capital …’ – try hard to find out how many arrests there are in a wave, and how many raids took place. ‘A stockpile of weapons’ is equally vague, as journalists in Northern Ireland know only too well. ‘An arsenal of weapons …’ is even worse, unless you know it is a very substantial number. If you can’t indicate numbers reasonably accurately, you should source the information very clearly. ‘The police issued a statement this morning saying they’d arrested a number of people in early-morning raids across the capital, and seized what they described as a stockpile of weapons’.
One mistake that seems to drive some people to apoplexy is to confuse ‘number’ with ‘amount’. ‘Absolutely disgraceful’, wrote one reader of the Independent, after reading in a leader column that ‘less candidates’ would be standing for election. The ‘less and fewer’ debate is as hard-fought as any over misuse of language. Less is a measure of quantity, and should not be applied to numbers. So it is less sugar, but fewer sugar lumps.
I certainly find it very irritating to hear people being described as a quantity of something. ‘An amazing amount of Japanese are supporting England’ (Radio 5 Live, 2002), which might make you wonder, ‘an amazing amount of Japanese what?’
‘Less’ and ‘amount’ refer to an uncountable substance. ‘Fewer’ and ‘number’ refer to countable items.
The UK has been using European standard metric measurements, and schools have been teaching them to our children, for a long time. The BBC TV children’s news programme Newsround has been using metres rather than yards for well over thirty years. The temperatures on the TV weather charts have been in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit for over a generation (some weather presenters still convert some values to Fahrenheit to keep older viewers informed, but the practice is dying out, along with the viewers who still can’t grasp that zero degrees is freezing and thirty degrees is hot).
Shops have to show quantities in metric measurements by law. I imagine that nearly everyone under the age of fifty is familiar with litres, kilos and grams. It’s interesting to note that the evergreen cookery queen Delia Smith uses ounces or fluid ounces in her recipes, with the metric equivalents written afterwards, while the younger Jamie Oliver’s recipes are in grams or litres first, with the old measures shown second.
Every newsroom should have an agreed house style. I would urge writers to use commonly used measures such as meters and litres more, to avoid the risk of being out of step with a very large and growing part of the audience.
Some of our traditional measures can also produce grammatical errors, which annoy many listeners and erode the authority of the news. On a game show, you might be content to hear, ‘You’ve just won fifty pound’, but you would not expect to hear on the news, ‘Pensioners are to get another five pound a week’. There are a surprising number of occasions when the singular is used wrongly instead of the plural.
‘In places the oil is two foot thick’, said a BBC World reporter after the wreck of the Prestige oil tanker. And in September 2002, according to ITN, the flood water was ‘almost four foot deep in places’. No, the oil was two feet thick, and the water was four feet deep.
Technically, the singular is used when it is part of a compound adjective (a twenty-foot drop) and the plural when part of a noun (a drop of twenty feet) or as part of an adverb (twenty feet down). So it is a twelve-inch ruler, but the ruler is twelve inches long.
If you find yourself in doubt, it’s sometimes helpful to mentally convert the measure into something else, to see whether the plural or singular sounds right. For example, no-one would say, ‘the oil is two metre thick’. It would be two metres thick. But it is a two-metre-thick layer of oil.
When quoting the results of opinion polls, especially political polls, language should be chosen with care. Professional pollsters acknowledge that even the best conducted national polls are likely to have a three per cent margin for error in either direction; we should remind the audience of that when reporting them. In recent years, some key polls used by broadcasters have been embarrassingly inaccurate. Before the May 2010 general election in the UK, the BBC’s credibility had been damaged in successive elections by exit polls that proved to be seriously misleading.
So don’t use language that gives greater credibility to opinion polls than they deserve. Polls can ‘suggest’ or ‘indicate’ something, but never ‘prove’ anything, or even ‘show’ what we think. The BBC is so sensitive about exaggerating the importance of opinion polls, its Editorial Guidelines devotes five pages to the subject, and includes the advice, ‘Do not lead a news bulletin or programme simply with the results of a voting intention poll.’
A big difference between writing numbers for newspapers and for broadcasting is that the convention in TV and radio is to write them out in words. So 2000 is scripted as ‘two thousand’. £2 million is written as ‘two million pounds’. If a pay rise is 6.6%, we should write six-point-six per cent.
The reason is that, when reading a script live on air, it’s quite possible to lose the flow when a number appears on the page or the teleprompter. The eye has to convert the figures into speech. It’s easier for the presenter to read aloud the spoken word. A more important reason is that there are several ways of saying some figures, and you want the presenter to use the most natural version. For example, in conversation you probably would not say, ‘He bought one thousand shares’ but ‘He bought a thousand shares’. In ordinary speech, a batsman who was out for 165 runs scored ‘a hundred and sixty-five’, not ‘one hundred and sixty-five’. Write numbers exactly as you want them spoken.
As for people’s ages, there’s a big difference between the way they appear in a newspaper and the way they are written in broadcast scripts. Personally, I think that some local newspapers seem obsessed with people’s ages. They are often irrelevant. In broadcasting, they are used much less. But if a person’s age really helps the story, we should use a natural spoken form such as, ‘Ron Knee, who’s 65’ rather than ‘65-year-old Ron Knee’. Not ‘Ron Knee aged 65’. And never ‘Ron Knee, 65.
Some of the most challenging aspects of writing very precisely involve questions of English grammar. One theory of writing broadcast news advocates that we should largely ignore grammar. The argument is that people do not speak very grammatically, and we are trying to write how people speak. Also, Latin-based English grammar was artificially imposed on a language that had blended many different linguistic roots, so it is in some ways a technical exercise that is at odds with human communication in the real world. These arguments seem to be gaining some ground, as the leading broadcasters try to be more accessible to a wider audience, and less pompous or elitist.
I take the view that all writers of broadcast news should have a good grasp of basic grammar, because it will help them to write precisely, accurately, elegantly and without ambiguity. It will also ensure that their reports command the respect of the entire audience. Very many people hate to hear expressions on the news that they regard as either sloppy or plain wrong. It is a misconception to say we do not speak grammatically in normal conversation. Overwhelmingly we do, because without rules of the game that we all follow, communication begins to break down. We may speak colloquially, but most of the time we follow the rules of grammar.
Writing for Broadcast Journalists is not a reference book on English grammar – you will be relieved to know. There is invaluable and detailed advice on many grammatical questions in another book in the Routledge Media Skills series, English for Journalists by Wynford Hicks.
But it will be useful in this section on accurate writing to consider briefly just a few of the particular grammatical problems that confront radio and TV journalists trying to script the spoken word.
Let’s start with the infamous split infinitive. I have to tentatively put my cards on the table by using a split infinitive and declaring that the usage doesn’t worry me. People split infinitives in conversation all the time. I think the people who object so intemperately when they hear divided verbs are in danger of being pedants. If we had been told that the mission of the Starship Enterprise was ‘to go boldly’ to seek out new worlds, I think we would have been less impressed with the boldness of the project. The split infinitive is in print everywhere as well. The Royal Television Society’s magazine Television asked the question, ‘Will the government’s plans to actively encourage the flow of funds into the UK from abroad find their way on to the small screen?’ I very much doubt whether the magazine received any complaints about sloppy grammar; ‘… to encourage actively …’ doesn’t seem to me to be preferable. (In fact, if this had been a broadcast script, the adverb ‘actively’ would probably have been dropped altogether.)
The split infinitive has been defended for many years. In the 1907 edition of The King’s English, the Fowler brothers say we should split infinitives sooner than write something ambiguous or artificial, and call the opposition to the split infinitive a ‘curious superstition’. And in 1947, in a letter to his editor complaining about a proofreader correcting his grammar, Raymond Chandler spluttered, ‘When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split!’
Having said all that, I must confess that in my twenty-seven years in broadcast journalism, I very rarely wrote a split infinitive. Why not? Because I knew there were some irritated and irritating people out there who would harrumph and think the newsreader or reporter was an ignoramus. I think these people are dying out, and I would advise scriptwriters today to boldly write whatever seems most natural to them – but also to know when they are splitting an infinitive, and choose to do it because it sounds right.
Mixing singular and plural in the same sentence is much more contentious and probably irritates more people. For many years, there has been a lively debate about whether collective nouns (government, council, union, committee, team, company) should take a singular or a plural verb. ‘The cabinet are meeting this afternoon…. Number Ten know this is dangerous ground’ (BBC TV News, 2010). Channel Four’s internal style guide is firm and uncompromising. ‘Collective nouns will always be singular, not plural. E.g. The Government is …’. But The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers says, ‘There is no rule; either a singular or a plural verb may be used.’
A few years ago, BBC Radio News, wishing to be consistent, came to the opposite conclusion to Channel Four, and declared that collective nouns should normally be plural. ‘The council have decided …’; ‘the government are considering …’. I support this advice. Most people use plural verbs with collective nouns when they are speaking, presumably because they want to indicate a group of people, not an inanimate object. No-one would say, ‘England is playing well, it might score soon’. And very few actually say, ‘The Cabinet has made its decision’, even though on paper it is grammatically correct. Here is an example from BBC TV News in February 2003. ‘Our reporter spent the day with one family from Southampton, who explained why they had given up their weekend to join the peace rally in London.’ It would have been most unnatural to write that the family explained why it had given up its weekend.
There is a strong lobby for the mathematical approach to this grammatical issue. Many newspapers reported jubilantly an error in an advertisement from the Department for Education and Skills. The advertisement included the line: ‘One in five British employees have literacy and numeracy skills.’ Even the normally restrained Independent splashed a headline, ‘Grammar Advert Included a Howler’, and continued, ‘Officials at the Department for Education and Skills have been left red-faced after an advertisement promoting a literacy campaign was found to contain a glaring error.’ As a journalist who has worked in broadcasting for many years, I’m reluctant to call this a howler. Most people would say ‘One in five have …’ rather than ‘One in five has …’ because we are imagining a lot of people, not just one. The same issue of the Independent carried a front-page headline in 2002, ‘One in 20 women has been raped’. I think if you were telling the story to someone, this would sound rather awkward, even if it is technically correct. In fact I think it even looks a little awkward on the page. How far should we take the singular? Would you write, ‘One in twenty women says she has been raped and that she was reluctant to report it to the police … ’?
In each case, you must use your own judgement on which verb sounds most natural. But there is one rule. If you feel that a singular verb must be used in a particular story, don’t change number, especially in the same sentence. It’s easily done. Here are a few examples that have been broadcast.
• The National Union of Mineworkers wants a rise of fifty pounds a week for each miner; but British Coal says they’ll only negotiate with the union which holds the majority at individual pits.
• The jury hasn’t been able to reach their verdict.
• The TUC have decided to back the health workers. It says their strike is justified.
• Every one of those present were creditors.
Most experienced editors are very sensitive to mixing singular and plural in the same sentence. The BBC’s Daniel Dodd says, ‘One of the things I dislike most is the habit of switching tenses within a sentence. It sounds ugly.’ ITN’s Sir David Nicholas pronounces on this subject with jabbing finger and glittering eyes. ‘I go absolutely mad when I hear “… the government have announced today that its policy will be …” Mixing up plurals and singulars is awful.’ I’m sure you would not want to contribute to Sir David going absolutely mad.
I think one, no-one and none should always take a singular verb, because it clearly sounds wrong for ‘one’ to be followed by a plural. ‘None of those who had read this book was able to dispute its wisdom.’
And bear in mind that data, media, criteria and phenomena are plural words – although this is a tricky Latinate zone. Many people are justifiably contemptuous when they hear a reporter saying, ‘This is a spectacular natural phenomena …’ or ‘The main criteria is …’ (it should be phenomenon and criterion). But ‘data’ and ‘media’ are very widely used now as singulars: ‘The data is clear on this …’; ‘The media has a tendency to sensationalise events …’. And what about referenda and referendums? Either is correct according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Personally, I think most people would use the latter. Maybe we need a referendum to sort it out.
A persistent problem for a writer of spoken English is trying to avoid saying ‘he or she’ or ‘his or hers’. The commonly used solutions do not follow mathematical grammar; for example, ‘Each journalist must find their own way through this difficulty’. Sometimes using the plural noun will be the answer. So instead of saying, ‘A good driver will fasten his seatbelt before he starts the engine’, we can prefer the non-sexist ‘Good drivers will fasten their seatbelt (or seatbelts if you feel really strongly about the maths) before they set off.’
In broadcast news, it’s probably best to be relaxed about the technicalities. Nearly everyone is happy to say, ‘Everyone has what they want’, and ‘Each of us has our secrets’. The advice repeated in this book is to consider what will be regarded as Good Spoken English, which will offend no-one, or hardly anyone, and to use the English language knowingly, not in ignorance.
Unfortunately, it’s not at all unusual to hear blatant grammatical errors on TV and radio. One of the most frequent and most irritating is the wrong use of such couplings as ‘John and I’ or ‘me and John’. ‘That’s all for this week, so from John and I, goodnight.’ (At this moment, thousands in the audience simultaneously say, or think, ‘Aagh!’) A book by James Cochrane about bad language is entitled Between you and I. He believes this common error may arise from a feeling of discomfort about using the word ‘me’, a sense that it is somehow impolite or uneducated. I think this comes from parents drumming into their children that it is ignorant to say ‘John and me are going to the park’, or especially, ‘Me and John are going to the park.’ It’s ‘John and I!’ they would insist. Well of course that’s right when ‘I’ is part of the subject of the sentence, but when it isn’t the subject, it should be ‘me’.
If ever you have a moment’s doubt about this, just separate yourself from your partner for a second, and ask whether you would say, ‘… from I, goodnight’, or ‘Me is going to the park.’
As for the ‘Me and John’ construction – Andrew Marr, who championed less stuffy and more accessible writing when he was the BBC’s Political Editor, says he absolutely hates it when he hears one of his kids saying, ‘Me and Jane are going out.’ But they seem determined to continue with it. My children are the same. Is it becoming the norm? Between you and me, I very much hope not.
The Plain English Campaign says that after spelling mistakes and the misuse of the apostrophe, which in broadcasting affect only captions on television and website versions of scripts, the most disliked error is the growing habit of saying ‘could of’ and ‘should of’ instead of ‘could have’ and ‘should have’. I haven’t noticed this in broadcast news scripts to date, but I have noticed ‘fed up of’ and ‘bored of’. ‘One man who’s hoping the British public haven’t bored of Popstars …’ (ITV News). Conventionally, it should be ‘… haven’t become bored with …’, but the new usage is a little briefer, and seems to be in line with ‘sick of’ or ‘tired of’. So it is sure to gain ground. As usual, I would counsel a traditional approach until the new usage is well established everywhere.
The confusion between ‘lie’ and ‘lay’ seems to be spreading alarmingly. I have heard several TV presenters saying such things as, ‘He woke up laying on the floor’. It is a deeply irritating error, confusing the verb lie (intransitive, past tense ‘lay’) with the verb lay (transitive, past tense ‘laid’). Pop music has played a part in confusing the two. ‘Lay your head on my shoulder’ is OK. ‘Lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed’ is wrong, unless Bob Dylan is inviting a hen to lay an egg. You have to lay something. If you recline on the bed, you lie on it. If you did it yesterday, you lay on it.
And who will spare a thought for the word whom? In recent years it has fallen out of use quite spectacularly. Who these days would say, ‘The woman whom the police want to interview’? But many listeners will know that whom should be used when it is the object of a sentence, or when it follows a preposition such as by, with, for, or from. ‘This is the woman from whom he bought the gun.’ ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls.’ Often it’s possible to turn the sentence around so that the word is unnecessary. ‘This is the woman who sold him the gun.’ But the word ‘whom’ does have its uses. Replacing it with ‘who’ can lead to ambiguity. ‘Who did you want to help?’ has two possible meanings: ‘which person do you want give assistance to?’, and ‘which person did you want to assist you?’
And another thing. If anyone tells you that you can’t start a sentence with ‘And’, as I have done in the last two paragraphs, they are plain wrong. There has never been such a rule, just a notion promoted by a past generation of schoolteachers who were following a rather pedantic school book of grammar. In spoken English, we do it all the time, rather than saying ‘In addition …’ or ‘Also …’ The first chapter of the authorised version of the Bible – written to be read aloud, as you will recall – has thirty-one sentences, of which thirty begin with ‘And …’.
And as you write your scripts, don’t become concerned about whether or not your sentences have a main verb. The first sentence in the previous paragraph may not be a technical sentence, but listeners can’t hear whether it is followed by a full stop, a dash, a colon or a semi-colon. Writing a self-contained phrase as a short sentence makes it easier to read.
Journalists use reported speech a great deal, especially in broadcast news, where direct quotes spoken by a reporter don’t work very well. Yet reported speech probably produces more errors than any other grammatical challenge. It is quite a complicated subject, and this is not the place for pages of technical explanation. If you are not sure about reported speech, look it up, and try to develop a sharp ear for what is regarded as right and wrong. In A Pocket Guide to Radio Newswriting, the BBC’s Tom Fort says, ‘Many writers and correspondents don’t know what reported speech is. They should. You cannot write good English for radio without some knowledge of how reported speech works.’ He gives some handy examples.
Jim says he will be going to the football match.
Jim said he would be going to the football match.
Jim said he had always wanted to go to a football match.
Jim said that when he was living in Paris, he often went to (or had gone to) football matches.
The key point is not to use the verb of direct speech in a reported speech construction, such as, ‘Jim said he’ll be going to the football match.’ In fact, he said ‘I’ll be going to the football match’, but in reported speech he said he’d be going to the football match.
And don’t think that you have to include ‘that’ in reported speech: for example, ‘Jim said that he would be going to the football match.’ It’s technically correct reported speech, but the word ‘that’ is normally dropped from this construction in spoken English, and is regarded by most editors in broadcast news as an awkward and intrusive word, easily deleted.
Newspapers are full of direct quotes. In broadcasting, the listeners and viewers can’t see the quotation marks, so writing direct speech into your scripts is risky. You must make it very clear who is saying these words before they are spoken. Presenters will always try to indicate by their voice that they are quoting directly. On television, it’s easier: TV presenters have perfected the technique of glancing down at their script to indicate they are reading the exact words. On radio, it’s much more difficult to indicate someone else’s words. It’s best to keep such quotes very short – usually just a phrase. I would suggest fifteen words is a maximum.
He described the allegations as ‘an appalling slur’ and ‘completely baseless’.
As he arrived at the talks, the leader of the Firefighters’ Union, Joe Black, denied they were refusing to negotiate, and accused the employers of going back on their word under pressure from the government. He told journalists, ‘They are serial liars. They’ve lied to us, and now they’re lying to you.’
It is extremely important for broadcasters to avoid excluding, offending or insulting their viewers and listeners. Insensitive use of language can have a powerful effect on some sections of the audience. We live in an age of rapidly changing social trends. Some words that were acceptable a generation ago are not acceptable now.
The debate about the acceptability of words describing identity rages even more fiercely than those about changing grammar or pronunciation, because words can wound deeply. The argument about ‘political correctness’ became prominent in the late ’80s, with American commentators and sociologists leading the drive against words which they believed had been used insensitively or inaccurately for too long. Traditionalists and commentators writing in the more conservative newspapers in the UK seized on some extreme examples to ridicule ‘political correctness gone mad’, which some used as a defence against all change: ‘I’m a plain-speaking man; I call a spade a spade.’ This position simply ignores the issue. Sensitive terminology is a serious element of good writing, which cannot be ignored.
Stereotyping can happen because a writer is ignorant, or thoughtless, or both. But in times of conflict, the language of broadcast news can be used deliberately as a powerful propaganda weapon. During the Balkan wars of the ’90s, the state-controlled television and radio stations in all the countries involved, but especially RTS in Serbia, fuelled the conflict with so-called hate speech and propagandist language. To some listeners, it carried echoes of the Nazis’ demonising of the Jews half a century earlier. During the war against Croatia, for example, the opposition forces were routinely described on the news in terms that translate into English as ‘barbarians, fascists, mercenaries, butchers, criminals, cut-throats and hoodlums’. President Milosevic was invariably described as ‘questing for peace’, while NATO acquired a new name, ‘The NATO Aggressor’, by which it was always called.
In Britain, broadcasters have learned to avoid such loaded language through the experience of the long conflict in Northern Ireland, the bitter and divisive miners’ strikes of the ’70s and ’80s, the Falklands conflict in ’82, and the wars in former Yugoslavia and the Gulf. There is now a strong British tradition of impartial language in the journalism of conflict. For example, during the Falklands campaign, despite some pressure from Conservative MPs, broadcasters avoided saying ‘our fleet is under attack’ or ‘our troops have entered Goose Green’, preferring ‘the British fleet’ or ‘the Royal Navy task force’ and ‘British troops’. There was a significant section of the British audience who were opposed to the campaign. Some viewers overseas were receiving these reports, for example in Ireland and Belgium, where UK domestic channels are widely heard and watched. At such a time, the wide credibility of the information was paramount. The detached style emphasised impartiality and trustworthiness. This style has been followed by most broadcasters working in the English language in coverage of the two Gulf wars and the conflict in Afghanistan.
For most journalists or students of journalism working in English, the danger of insensitive usage is less about propagandist phraseology or hate-speech, and more about careless descriptions of everyday stories and the routines of life in a changing society. Writers must beware of insulting parts of their audience on issues of sex and gender, race and religion, and disability.
Even in the twenty-first century, a few male journalists seem to have difficulty in accepting that some traditionally used titles and expressions annoy many women. Newspaper journalist Sarah Strickland points out that there is a bias against women embedded in the English language. The name of our species is Man. Women make up more than half the population, but using words such as mankind, man-made, spokesman, newsman, foreman, man-to-man, or the man in the street, gives the impression that women are less important, or are excluded from mainstream society. Back in 1991, Ms Strickland wrote in the Guardian:
Some progress has been made; many people are now careful to use words like chairperson for chairman, workers for workmen, humans for mankind. Some newspapers will use firefighters not firemen, official not spokesman, supervisor not foreman. Using the plural can often avoid excluding women. Rather than saying, ‘the good driver will always look in his mirror before he turns’, you can say, ‘good drivers always look in their mirrors before they turn’.
When women began to enter traditionally male jobs, the language adapted to show that they were exceptions to the rule. Expressions like lady doctor have now, thankfully, disappeared, as have poetess, authoress and murderess. But we still have actress, waitress, stewardess. Why can’t a woman be an actor?
I quote the above to show that sexism in language arouses strong feelings, and has done for some time. I think further progress has been made since 1991. Female actors are now the norm; firefighter is the job title. We must be aware that attitudes to language change quickly. My personal view is that broadcasters have been a little slow to recognise growing concerns about sexist terminology, which reflect an enormous social change in post-war Europe. Should we continue to use the following words, for example?
Ambulancemen. No. There are very many women working in the Ambulance Service. Say ambulance crews.
Businessmen or ‘the effect on the small businessman’. No. This excludes the large number of women in business, and should be excluded from scripts. Say ‘people in business’, ‘the business community’; even ‘business-people’ is preferable.
Chairman. It’s not a new problem. In 1915, when the Women’s Institute was founded, the people chairing meetings were called ‘President’ to avoid the use of ‘Madam-chairman’. These days, we should try to use the title that the individual involved in the story prefers and uses. Some women who chair committees/councils/businesses use Chairperson. Some stick to Chairman. Others are called Chair. I remember many years ago a senior editor exclaiming, ‘You can’t call her a piece of furniture!’ Well, you can. More and more people do. I think Chair is becoming widely acceptable, and will continue to gain ground in normal usage.
Fireman. No. For several years the Fire Service has called all its uniformed men and women firefighters, leading firefighters, and fire officers.
Girls. When we mean women, no. This used to be very widely used and was probably thought to be flattering. The girls in the office …; the girls in the frontline …; Britain’s girls strike gold on the track. Now it’s regarded as condescending. I’m told by the girls in the newsroom that they prefer to be called women.
Housewives. No. Heartily disliked by many women, as in ‘the housewife’s shopping basket’. To be avoided. In this context, refer to shoppers or consumers. In other contexts, full-time mother seems to be quite widely used for mums, and homemaker is preferred by some women who don’t go out to work.
Manned/manning. Watch out for this one. A television report on a Gulf helpline said it was ‘manned 24 hours a day’ as we saw a room full of women answering phones. Open or working 24 hours a day would have avoided the sexist usage. Manning levels should be staffing levels.
Postmen. ‘A quarter of postmen to cross picket lines’ (Daily Telegraph, 2009). There are thousands of women in the Communication Workers Union, and many deliver mail. We should say ‘postal workers’ even in headlines, and when talking about delivery staff, there’s no ready alternative to ‘postmen and women’.
Servicemen. In 2003, I heard on BBC Five Live, ‘We are joined by BFBS for the second half commentary, so a particularly warm welcome to all the servicemen listening in the Gulf.’ There are many women serving in the armed forces, so we really should say service personnel, or even service men and women.
Taxman. Certainly not. It’s a long time since George Harrison wrote a song about the ‘Taxman’. These days, tax offices employ more women than men. Instead of writing ‘an attempt to escape the taxman’, try tax office, Inland Revenue, tax inspectors, or even the tax people.
As for sexual orientation, the terminology is changing so quickly I am reluctant to commit any advice to print. My father’s generation would say, ‘He’s a bit queer …’ and meant no offence by it. The word ‘homosexual’ is correct, but disliked by some. The word ‘gay’ has very wide acceptance now. But I am sure that any journalist or media student reading this book would not dream of writing, ‘… an objection to the bill from gay MP Nigel Mortenson’. Sexual orientation, which is a complicated issue in many cases, is a private matter. It should be ignored unless it is directly and openly pertinent to a story.
For many years, all the major broadcasters in Britain have followed their own guidelines on references to race, colour and religion. In essence, they all say that a person’s colour, ethnic origin or religious allegiance should be mentioned only if it is absolutely relevant to the story. Most will agree that this policy is fair and sensible. It avoids stereotyping and the promotion of prejudice. But under pressure of deadlines, some irrelevant ethnic references can slip through. ‘The record lottery winner is James Smith, a black bus driver from Salford.’ Always ask yourself whether you would use the adjective ‘white’ in the same circumstances. It’s a more serious mistake if you are reporting crime. Many members of ethnic minority groups are infuriated if they hear something like, ‘a grandmother has been mugged by two black youths’, because they know the journalist would not have written ‘… by two white youths’, and the report is therefore perpetuating a stereotype.
Take extra care with police descriptions of incidents. ‘The car was driven by a West Indian male’ may be what the duty sergeant tells you, but it would be completely unacceptable to broadcast it that way. First, ‘West Indian’ is almost certainly wrong – he was probably British. Secondly, the colour/nationality/ethnic background of the suspect/witness – black, African-Caribbean – is only relevant if it is part of a given description. ‘The police are searching for a tall, black man in his thirties. He’s described as heavily built, with a moustache and short hair.’ Similarly, descriptions of white people the police are hoping to find should always include the skin colour; ‘He’s described as white …’ etc.
Note that the word ‘ethnic’ can be misused. The editor of the BBC’s African and Caribbean programme unit in Birmingham issued guidance to his producers, which said ‘It is correct to refer to people from ethnic minorities. But don’t be tempted to shorten it to “ethnics”, which black and Asian people dislike, and is meaningless. We’re all ethnic.’
Scriptwriters must take care when dealing with stories about extreme right-wing groups. When the British National Party won a few council seats and two European Parliament seats in 2009, there was some soul-searching about whether or not they could be described on air as a ‘racist party’. It may be clear to all thinking people that, if BNP leader Nick Griffin believes that black footballers shouldn’t play for England, as expressed in a BBC radio interview in 2009, then he must be racist. But the BNP denies racism. And the party evidently has supporters. My advice is to report the activities of such parties or groups factually and objectively, attributing any claims about racism. We certainly should not write ‘… the racist BNP …’. Let the audience decide on the basis of accurate reporting.
A lot of people are colour-sensitive. Geographical or ethnic origin is often more relevant and informative than colour of skin: ‘Bangladeshi, Jamaican, Indian’, etc. The adjective ‘black’, at one time considered to be derogatory, is now widely acceptable as a description for non-white people. In Britain, some Asian people are happy to be called black; others are not. The Equality and Human Rights Commission prefers to use ‘black and Asian people’, or ‘Asian, African and Caribbean people’. ‘People of colour’ is being used in the USA, but rarely in the UK, so is best avoided. ‘Half-caste’ is considered offensive; use ‘mixed race’, or refer to a person being ‘of mixed parentage’. Use the term ‘black people’ rather than ‘blacks’, which carries echoes of South African apartheid and slavery in the southern states of the USA. People are people first. And always remember, colour and race are often irrelevant in news stories.
Geographically, Asia is a vast part of the world, home to many different peoples with different cultures, languages, religions and physical characteristics. Journalists should have some knowledge of the main Asian groups, and should avoid mistakes that large numbers of Asian listeners and viewers will regard as ridiculous and excluding. Anita Bhalla worked as Community Affairs Correspondent for BBC Birmingham for several years before becoming Head of Political and Community Affairs for the BBC English Regions. This is an extract of the guidance she issued to journalists to help them avoid such mistakes.
The term ‘Asian’ is often used to describe someone from the old Indian sub-continent; strictly speaking ‘South Asian’ is correct but not widely used in Britain. Many people describe themselves as coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc., or even from regions in those countries, e.g. ‘Gujerati’, ‘Mirpuri’, ‘Sylheti’. Some young people prefer to call themselves ‘British Asian’.
Hindu names: Traditionally Hindu names have three parts: a personal name, followed by a middle name, followed by a family name. Examples: Kishore Bhai Patel, Bimla Devi Sharma.
Some Hindus have in the past given up their family name as a rejection of the caste system, in which case the middle name is used as a surname, e.g. Harish Lal, whose wife may be Usha Devi. A Hindu woman normally takes her husband’s family name after marriage. The Hindu equivalent for Mr and Mrs, Shri and Shrimati, are not generally used in the UK.
Sikh names: Traditionally Sikh names have a personal name followed by a religious title – Singh for males and Kaur for females – followed by a family name when one exists.
Examples: Manjit Kaur, Manjit Singh Sandhu (note that many Sikh personal names can be male or female), Ajit Singh, Resham Kaur Uppal (Singh means ‘lion’, Kaur means ‘princess’). It is better not to refer to someone as Mrs Kaur or Mr Singh; the full name should be used, Mrs Gurdev Kaur, Mr Karamjit Singh.
Muslim names: All Muslims have a personal name, which is usually combined for men with a religious name, and for women with a female title.
Male examples: personal names (first or second): Akhbar, Aziz, Hasan, Nazir; religious names (first or second), Mohammed, Allah, Hussain, Ali. The favoured way of addressing a male Muslim would be by a combination of his personal and religious names, e.g. Mr Bashir Ali, Mr Mohammed Nazir. A Muslim should not be addressed only by his religious name, so Mr Allah or Mr Mohammed are out.
Female examples: personal names: Amina, Fatima, Razia, Yasmin; female titles: Bano, Begum, Bibi, Khatoon. So we could have Mrs Fatima Begum, Ms Amina Khatoon; but Mrs Begum is incorrect because it consists only of two titles, Mrs and Begum.
Some Muslim men and, more rarely, women may also use a final hereditary/family name, e.g. Choudhury, Khan, Shah.
In summary, if you have any doubts, use the full name.
An important pointer for the unwary writer is about religious buildings. Sikhs pray in a gurdwara; Muslims pray in a mosque; Hindus pray in a temple. Don’t mix them up.
As with race, a person’s religion should be mentioned only if it has direct relevance to the story. And all journalists should make sure they know something about the main religions that make up the diversity of faith in modern Britain. Displaying ignorance of religious practice or important events turns off sections of the audience and erodes credibility. According to recent surveys, more than a million people in Britain attend a mosque regularly. So all writers of news should know that Hindus worship in temples, not mosques, and should be aware of the main religious dates in the calendar, such as the month of Ramadan, or the festivals of Eid and Diwali.
If you feel the need for further reading on this subject, the ITV Cultural Diversity Guide (2003) describes all the main faiths found in the UK. You can order a copy by email: culturaldiversity@granadamedia.com
In this subject area, too, we must be aware of terminology that might give offence. It’s worth remembering that one in four of the UK population either has a disability, or is related to or cares for a disabled person. Almost as many will suffer from a mental illness at some time in their lives. With an ageing population, a growing number of viewers and listeners will be hard of hearing and will have mobility problems.
As with race, we should regard people as people, and mention a disability only if it is strictly pertinent to the story. ‘The disabled’ gives a sweeping impression, which includes a wide variety of conditions and can imply uselessness or a general incapacity. The word is usually inaccurate as well as harsh. ‘People with disabilities’ is better; be specific whenever possible.
‘The handicapped’ is even worse. No person with a disability likes to be portrayed as a handicap to society. The similarity to the phase ‘cap-in-hand’ is no coincidence. In eighteenth-century horse racing, the best jockeys were sometimes required to ride one-handed, with their cap held in the other hand, hence ‘handicapping’. Always try to be specific about someone’s condition – if it is relevant. It is a difficult part of writing sensitively. Here is a part of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines on terminology.
• Never refer to ‘the handicapped’. Words like ‘invalid’, ‘spastic’, ‘retarded’ or ‘defective’ cause widespread offence.
• Terms such as ‘the blind’ or ‘the deaf’ are often disliked. ‘Crippled with’, ‘victim of’, ‘suffering from’, ‘afflicted by’ should be avoided. ‘People who have’ or ‘a person with’ will usually be clear, factual and inoffensive.
• However, some people with disabilities will describe themselves bluntly as ‘blind’, ‘deaf’ or ‘crippled’. We should respect their right to call themselves what they wish, while trying to avoid offence.
• People with an intellectual disability are now normally described as ‘people with learning difficulties’. ‘Mental handicap’ is acceptable to some people, but others dislike it because they believe it carries a stigma.
• Learning difficulties should not be confused with mental illness.
• Try to be precise about deafness. Use ‘deaf/partially deaf/deafened/ hard of hearing’. ‘Deaf and dumb’ is not acceptable.
• Some people who use wheelchairs often dislike the terms ‘confined to a wheelchair’ or ‘wheelchair-bound’ on the grounds that wheelchairs provide mobility, not confinement. Also many wheelchair users get out of the chair some of the time. A person who ‘uses a wheelchair’ or ‘is in a wheelchair’ is preferable.
In recent years, the medical profession has stopped using the phrase ‘Siamese twins’ because it is inaccurate, and is probably disliked by people from Thailand. ‘Conjoined twins’ is now generally understood. ITV News was careful to use this phrase when conjoined twins from Manila arrived in the USA for a risky operation to separate them. But someone had failed to tell the graphic designer, so the caption over the newsreader’s shoulder proclaimed the children from the Philippines to be ‘Siamese twins’.
Elements of the British tabloid press blatantly disregard the feelings of people with disabilities or illnesses in favour of sensationalism or sentimentality. So it is not uncommon to read about ‘Little Gemma, crippled from birth …’ or ‘Knife-Nut Jailed’. When Frank Bruno was committed to a mental hospital, the Sun headlined him as ‘Bonkers Bruno’. This kind of language is unacceptable on radio and television.
There is plenty of evidence that insensitive reporting of suicide or attempted suicide – particularly on television – can cause mentally unstable people to copy what they have seen. I feel sure that television news should never show people jumping to their death, or holding a gun to their head, and should never show people who have been hanged – or even someone with a noose around their neck. Good broadcast journalism requires sensitivity in the use of disturbing images and in the use of words. There is useful guidance on this from The MediaWise Trust, which provides research, advice and training on media ethics (www.mediawise.org.uk). I hope all journalists will think carefully why so many minority groups feel they are stereotyped, and sometimes insulted, by careless language in news programmes.
The media must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
(The Code of Practice of the British Press Complaints Commission)
Many journalists working in broadcasting, particularly in local and regional newsrooms, are required to broadcast their scripts themselves. So if you find it difficult to read aloud without making any errors, maybe you should try a different profession. It is not easy, especially under pressure. But if our journalism is to be respected for its accuracy, it is very important to be able to pronounce words correctly. As we write, we should beware of difficult words.
Newsreaders, reporters and programme presenters are expected to get the most complicated words and names right every time. It can be useful to have a pronunciation dictionary to hand, such as the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. If you are writing a script for someone else to read, it’s a very good idea to alert the presenter to difficult names. Some writers put a phonetic version in square brackets after the name. Find out what your presenter and producer prefer. Inconsistent pronunciation of names is regarded as unprofessional. As soon as the huge nuclear accident at Chernobyl became known, the BBC pronunciation unit set to work and declared that this little-known place should be pronounced ‘Cher-nob-bil’. Other broadcasters and some politicians began by saying ‘Churnobil’, but soon switched to Auntie’s choice.
Local radio journalists are often required to read international news. All broadcast journalists should listen to the mainstream news programmes and note the correct pronunciations. I once heard a local radio newsreader pronouncing Arkansas to rhyme with Kansas, which shows carelessness as well as ignorance. If in doubt, ask.
Some common words and phrases are regularly mispronounced, usually because the correct pronunciation is a little difficult. Here are a few to note.
• Vunnerable (vulnerable). Even the most venerable get it wrong. I think ‘vunnerable’ is an upper-class affectation, like ‘guvverment’ and ‘pryminister’. In broadcast news, it just sounds wrong.
• Nucular (nuclear). George W. Bush was not the only leader of a nuclear power who could not pronounce ‘nuclear’ correctly. Tony Blair struggled with it too. If you also find it difficult, think of it as two words – new clear.
• Reckonise (recognise).
• Laura Norder. The well known crime fighter.
• Secketary (secretary).
• Febuary (February).
• Burgalry (burglary).
• Joolery (jewellery).
• You ’n Jaws. The radio programme for conshumers.
• Ecksettera (etcetera, etcetera).
The best way to avoid stumbling or mispronouncing on air is to speak your script aloud as soon as you have written it, to make sure it sounds clear. The BBC News Styleguide quotes the example of a script that looks fine, but isn’t so good when spoken aloud.
There were scenes of delight in Port Talbot tonight, as news of the settlement spread.
News presenters will not thank you if you give them tongue-twisters to read aloud. For example, the word ‘statistics’ is notoriously difficult to negotiate without stumbling. Try to avoid it. Instead of writing, ‘According to the latest statistics …’ maybe you can write, ‘The latest figures indicate …’, or ‘According to new research …’, or drop the phrase altogether and let the figures speak for themselves. One radio newsreader had to grapple with ‘the Navy’s provision of efficient ships’. Another is said to have refused to read, ‘she dismissed this as a myth’. A long-serving presenter in the BBC’s midland region, David Stevens, had a slight propensity to spoonerisms, such as ‘The South West Watershire Worcesterboard’, or ‘The Royal Arse Hortillery’. There isn’t much a scriptwriter can do about that kind of mispronunciation, other than provide the script early, so that the presenter has time to read it through before going on air.
It’s a fundamental principle of writing broadcast scripts that you write them as they will be spoken. This makes them very different from newspaper or magazine articles. So most broadcast journalists will write, ‘The Prime Minister won’t be going to Chequers this weekend …’ rather than ‘will not be’. ‘There’ll be a public enquiry …’ ‘It’ll be wet and windy …’. As you may have noticed in this book, after years of writing broadcast scripts, I find it difficult to write ‘it is’ rather than ‘it’s’, or ‘do not’ rather than ‘don’t’.
Some broadcasters who deliberately adopt a more formal and precise style, such as the BBC World Service and BBC Radios Four and Three, have a slight problem with this kind of colloquial writing, and tend to avoid the shortened versions of the verbs, at least in the studio introductions. ‘The Prime Minister is to drop his plans for …’ rather than, ‘The Prime Minster’s dropping his plans …’. Follow the style of your station. My personal opinion is that the natural spoken forms are generally acceptable, and are more accessible.
There are some occasions when the full verb should be used: ‘aren’t’ and ‘weren’t’ can be misheard. ‘The victim’s relatives aren’t attending the proceedings.’ ‘The police weren’t to blame for the death.’ So sometimes it’s good practice to write and say ‘are not’ and ‘were not’ to emphasise the negative clearly.
Having established the main point of the story for the target audience, and having decided to write it in the first line, and having promised yourself to write Good Spoken English with accurate language, simple constructions and no excess baggage, the next problem for any writer is how to order the information.
All news stories should have a structure or shape. A randomly presented collection of facts will become a jumble of information that fails to keep the interest of the audience. In broadcasting, there is quite a big difference between the structure of a short bulletin item, and the longer reporter-piece. The short item has to summarise the core of the story in the first sentence, then add a few explanatory facts. The longer reporter-piece, which follows the establishing introduction (the intro), is likely to use the story-telling technique known as narrative journalism.
News bulletins, which are essentially brief summaries of the news, are the staple journalistic product on many radio stations. These bulletins can be anything from one to five minutes long, with the longer ones including short voice-pieces or interview clips. The shorter bulletins are usually delivered as a ‘straight read’ from a presenter, with each story lasting no longer than fifteen seconds. Clearly, the structure of these short bulletin stories has to be extremely simple.
Two people have been killed in a crash on the M1 in Northamptonshire involving thirty vehicles. It happened during this morning’s rush hour when fog was affecting the area. The southbound carriageway is still closed between junctions fifteen and fourteen.
A thousand baggage-handlers and check-in staff have started a two-day pay strike at Heathrow Airport. Eight flights have been cancelled so far. Kuwait Airways and Middle-East Airlines have been the worst hit.
These very compact items usually aim to encapsulate the story in the first sentence, then to give some supporting facts, favouring any information that might be directly useful to the listeners. Younger journalists may find it a little intimidating to be asked to summarise a complex story in about twelve seconds (as above). It’s good advice to remember the commonly quoted formula of the five w-questions: who? why? when? where? what?
Originally this advice on how to write journalistically came from Rudyard Kipling’s verse The Elephant’s Child (1902), and included ‘how?’ as a sixth question.
I keep six honest serving-men,
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
All journalism is a process of question-and-answer. Researching and interviewing follows this process literally. Writing a story does it mentally. Even a short bulletin story will often answer most of these mental questions. I think that who, what and where are essential. When is often included (though listeners expect broadcast news to be extremely recent; if it all happened yesterday and we’ve only just picked up the story, we may choose to ignore the when!).
A short bulletin usually has to be written quickly. In many radio stations, one journalist probably has to write it all, and to rewrite the bulletin every hour or half-hour. So there can be some pressure when you are producing these compact summaries. If you are having difficulty getting started, using the question ‘where?’ can help.
In southern Afghanistan, two American marines have been killed …
At Twickenham, England have beaten Ireland …
This helps the newsreader to indicate a new story, and helps listeners to orientate themselves immediately as you whiz them around the world. In local radio, we know from research that listeners like to hear the name of their own town, and prick up their ears at the mention of a familiar place. But it would become extremely tedious to start every story with the location. Mix up the who, where and what openings.
If you decide to start with who – the person at the centre of the story – it’s sometimes far from clear which person to choose, especially when one is accusing another of something. If, for example, the former Conservative Home Office Minister, Anne Widdecombe, had warned the Tory Leader David Cameron to stop behaving in a presidential manner and to listen to grassroots opinion, you may decide that the first name in the bulletin story should be the man of the moment, rather than the critic.
David Cameron has been warned by a senior Conservative colleague that his presidential style could be his undoing. The warning comes in a Sunday newspaper article by Anne Widdecombe, who served as a Home Office Minister in the last Tory government. She says the party leader must be prepared to listen to colleagues to achieve broad party support, rather than rely on what she calls his ‘rule by dictat’ backed up by an inner-circle of enforcers.
Writing the intro often requires a discipline that is similar to writing short bulletin-stories, with the essence of the story captured in the first sentence – but not always. There are many different kinds of programme requiring different styles of writing. In case any reader is not sure what is meant here by the intro, the word does not mean quite the same as it does in the world of newspapers, where it simply means the first paragraph. (In America they call it the lead.) In broadcasting, the intro is read by a presenter, and introduces a voiced report from a correspondent, or perhaps a live interview. In some broadcast newsrooms it’s called the cue. Sometimes, on a programme running-order, it’s a link. Most people call it the ‘intro’. These intros appear in news programmes rather than news bulletins, and tend to have a more personal touch than the short bulletin story, which is relatively anonymous.
The classic or conventional intro will tell the essential story in a self-contained first sentence. It will be quite a concise sentence, covering who and what, and possibly where or when. A length of twelve to twenty words is typical. Anything over thirty words for this opening sentence may lose impact, and is likely to make the presenter take a breath.
Council tax bills are to rise on average next year by twice the rate of inflation’ …
A year-long study into the MMR vaccine concludes there’s no evidence it can cause autism …
Aid agencies now say more than a hundred thousand people were killed by Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti …
The classic intro will follow up the first sentence with the elements that will most affect the listener, but will not attempt to tell the whole story. The reporter is about to do that. It is very irritating to hear an intro that gives all the interesting facts, followed by reporter immediately repeating most of them. So this might be a thirty-second intro leading into a one-minute voice report on radio:
Aid agencies now say more than a hundred thousand people were killed by Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. Field workers for Oxfam and Save the Children report widespread devastation as far as a hundred miles from the epicentre of the quake. Many people are thought to be trapped in collapsed buildings and there’s a shortage of drinking water and medicines. There’s growing criticism of the slow pace of international help. Our reporter Emma Walsh has spent the day with Oxfam field officers, and has just sent this report. (Descriptive eye-witness report follows with quotes from Oxfam field officer.)
Many reports are developments of a running story. It is generally good practice to put the latest development in the top line, but the audience must be up to speed. Don’t start with the latest twist if you think the audience will not know what you are talking about.
Broadcasting and online news, unlike the morning papers, provide round-the-clock services where news stories have to be refreshed all the time. It’s a matter of judgement when an update is required. Conventionally, stories have been refreshed for the main points of viewing or listening to the news – breakfast time, lunchtime, tea-time, late evening. With 24-hour news, it’s becoming a constant process. I think that when a story has been reported for about two or three hours (there’s been a big crash on the motorway), then it must be updated (the motorway is still closed after a pile-up this morning); and after another few hours we must start assuming most people have heard about it (police are blaming drivers who ignored fog hazard lights for the crash this morning, which killed four people).
Many journalists strive to get a ‘tonight’ or a ‘this morning’ into their first sentence. And they like to use the present tense at the start of the story, as in the examples above. It’s good to be immediate. But don’t make it sound unnatural.
‘Hillary Clinton is on her way to Jerusalem tonight’ is fine. ‘Hillary Clinton is tonight preparing to fly to Jerusalem’ is artificial immediacy, and isn’t spoken English.
The length of an intro should be in proportion to the length of the report that follows. So the eye-witness radio report on the big lead story from Haiti needed a set-up of around thirty seconds. A short, snappy voice-piece, which may be only thirty-five seconds long, requires a short and snappy introduction. But even in the crispest bulletins, a single sentence can be unsatisfactory. ‘Some GM crops can damage the environment, according to the first results of a government study. John Williams reports’ sounds just a little too hurried, because it doesn’t give the listener a real chance to absorb the information before the voice changes and the details start to flow. Two sentences of information are usually better than one.
Longer reports require longer introductions, for several reasons. The longer report will be part of a news programme, aiming to deliver more rounded and detailed journalism, and trying to put daily events into context and explain them. So the intro will have more to say, to establish what the report is going to be about. The longer introduction also prepares the audience mentally for a longer report. The listeners or viewers know subconsciously that a two-line intro will be followed by a short despatch. A more developed intro sets them up for a more developed report.
For example, on British television, Five News, which targets younger viewers, uses a fast pace and quite brief reports, some less than a minute long. So the intros are likely to be no more than fifteen seconds. An intro to a standard-length report of one minute, forty seconds on ITN’s news is likely to be around twenty-five seconds long, and an introduction to a six-minute film on BBC’s Newsnight can be a minute long, with graphics establishing the main themes to be explored.
The longer introduction, leading into a longer report, provides many more opportunities for a more creative approach than just encapsulating the story in the first sentence, as in the classic intro. In the past thirty years, there has been a big change in the way radio reports and television packages are introduced. In the ’70s, most radio and TV intros were versions of the classic. Too much informality was frowned upon by British editors, and regarded as an American trait, driven by the need to increase ratings rather than tell the story clearly.
I remember watching a prime-time TV news programme in New York in 1980 and mentally ridiculing an introduction which, if I remember rightly, went like this: ‘They say a man’s life hangs by a thread. Last night, that thread broke for two firemen in Brooklyn.’ I thought it was unutterably corny (or cheesy, to use the more up-to-date word), and I still do. This kind of street-corner philosophy would not be acceptable on television news in the UK. On the other hand, we have moved substantially in the direction of the USA in the way that intros in news and current affairs programmes are much more conversational and inviting than they used to be.
One reason is that writers of news are more conscious of the need to avoid repeating the headlines. As will be explored at a little more length in a section about writing headlines (Chapter 5), the news programme should be regarded as an organic whole. The headline, intro, reporter-package, live interview, and closing headline on any given story should be an integrated piece of communication, telling the listeners or viewers a complete or developing story without confusion or needless repetition.
So if the headline at the top of the programme has told us that …
Two firefighters have been killed trying to save a Manchester school.
… the intro-writer can assume that nearly all the listeners or viewers have clearly understood that. The intro can try to capture the mood, indicate the drama of the incident, be more immediate, and be more inviting.
Six children have lost their fathers today, after a fierce fire engulfed a paint store in Manchester. It was just fifty yards from a primary school. Fire teams were trying to beat back the flames – then the roof collapsed. Two firefighters, both fathers of three children, were killed – trapped among exploding drums of chemicals.
The style of intro will depend on the established style of your TV channel or radio station. But an increasing number of broadcast news programmes are rejecting the boring factual first line for something that aims to be as relevant to the audience as possible, using ‘you’ and ‘we’ when appropriate. This is particularly effective in regional television and local radio, which like to be regarded as a part of the community, and as being as friendly as possible.
A few years ago, Heart FM became the most popular radio station in central England, partly because of its carefully selected music playlist, and partly because of its bright and engaging tone of voice. This included the news bulletins, which were written and delivered in an extremely conversational style, which had been developed by their News Editor, Sue Owen, later the Managing Editor at BBC Radio Stoke. She issued a Heart FM’s internal style guide, which rammed home the idea that every story would be told to the listeners in a natural way, with no journalese. Here’s an extract:
Be more creative in the way you write – turn it around, make it interesting, use normal language and definitely not ‘newspeak’ or clichés!
DON’T start a story with either a person or an organisation’s name or title. There is nothing more dull than a top line which reads: ‘Birmingham City Council is to end its weekly rubbish collections and replace them with fortnightly ones to cut costs.’
How about this instead … ‘If you live in Birmingham, you’ll soon only see your dustbin men every fortnight instead of every week.’
Embarrassing examples we have broadcast:
‘The West Midlands Low Pay Unit is being forced to withdraw help from fifty thousand people because of where they live. Walsall and Solihull councils have withdrawn funding for the first time in 20 years which means low paid workers in those areas will not be able to use its services.’
Argh! [writes Sue Owen], so how about:
‘If you’re in a poorly paid job in Walsall or Solihull and have trouble at work, you could soon lose one of your lifelines. The local councils have decided to stop giving cash support to the West Midlands Low Pay Unit, and that means you’ll be turned away if you need help.’
Another example.
‘Shadow Home Secretary Anne Widdecombe’s been in Birmingham today giving her support to a group trying to kick prostitution out of their community.’
Yawn. Try …
‘If you’re sick of prostitutes hanging around outside your house, you’ve got one of the Tories’ best known battlers on your side’ and name her and localise in the second sentence.
Heart FM’s style may not be right for other broadcasters. It is easier to use ‘you’, ‘your’, ‘you’ve’, ‘you’re’ in local radio intros than on more traditional national or international channels. But Heart News was (and I guess still is) accurate, interesting and up-to-the-minute, and sounded relevant to the target listeners. And it was mercifully devoid of journalese. To my mind, it exposed how rigid and boring much of the scriptwriting is on radio and television. More and more news outlets are adopting this more personalised style.
Some news editors believe it’s easier to engage the individual member of the audience directly on television than on radio. Most radio newsreaders are disembodied voices – very familiar to the listeners, of course – but strangely insubstantial! The eye-to-eye contact of TV makes it easier for a presenter to be less formal, especially in the second half of a news programme. You can’t play around too much with the intros to serious, tragic or worrying stories at the top of the programme. Even there, the opening words should not have the tone of an official announcement. But later in a full news programme, or in the so-called ‘second quarter hour’ on a 24-hour news channel, good writers can employ the engaging style. Questions are quite popular.
Do you worry that your kids might be taking drugs? A Mori poll of teenagers says two out of three seventeen-year-olds have experimented with illegal drugs – with cannabis the most popular substance, followed by ecstasy. Only two per cent of those polled said they had used hard drugs like heroin.
The first sentence is clearly expendable. But it could serve to attract the attention of many viewers, as well as creating a bond with the presenter.
Do you ever drive with a mobile phone in your hand?
Now, where do you think was the favourite holiday destination for the British last year?
Does natural childbirth lead to happier children?
The question-intro should be used sparingly. But it does have its place in longer broadcast-news programmes, particularly on television, where visual contact with the presenter makes a chattier approach more suitable.
Many TV news programmes use a graphic to emphasise the subject of each main story in visual terms. This may be electronically inserted over the newsreader’s shoulder, or be on a screen next to the presenter. There are some clear rules about the way an intro script should be written if a graphic is being shown with the presenter.
The graphic image will have been chosen to encapsulate the story; maybe a petrol pump handle for rising fuel prices, or Israeli and Palestinian flags for a relaxation of travel restrictions in the West Bank. If you are the scriptwriter, it is essential that you see this image in advance; ideally, you will have helped to choose it. Remember that every viewer will glance at it, the moment your intro starts. The power of the image on television is overwhelming. These intro-graphics are supposed to help the viewer to adjust immediately to a new story, not to confuse them. So the first line of your script should refer to the picture.
The petrol pump image would not work well with an intro saying, ‘OPEC oil-producers, meeting in Dubai, have decided to cut production immediately to halt the slide in oil prices …’. It must say: ‘Petrol prices are likely to go up by as much as three pence a litre in the next few weeks …’ (a much better intro anyway). The Israeli and Palestinian flags (not a very good idea because it is a boring and hackneyed image, and many people may not know the Palestinian flag immediately) must accompany a top line mentioning Israel and the Palestinian Authority or the Palestinians. The pictures and words must work together straight away.
Sometimes the graphic accompanying the newsreader will include a well known face – the Pope; the President of the United States; Prince Charles. The script must mention the person as soon as possible. Otherwise there is a subconscious period of waiting until the picture is referred to by the presenter. For example, a picture of the US President does not work too well if the intro says, ‘Twenty-eight billion dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq are likely to be voted through Congress later today …’. If that’s the best intro, use a picture of the Capitol. If the President’s political victory is the main point of the story, rewrite the intro so that he is mentioned in the first line.
If two faces are on the graphic, perhaps to indicate a planned meeting between the Prime Minister and the President of Russia, then write the script so that the person on the left is named before the person on the right. From left to right is the way we are used to scanning images.
If there are words printed on the graphic behind the newsreader, the script must use exactly the same words early in the introduction, so that the viewer can read them and listen to the script simultaneously. The viewer’s eye and ear must work together to follow the story. (There is a little more on this subject in the section on TV news graphics in Chapter 5.)
Many television news programmes have two presenters. It’s regarded as a friendlier presentation style compared with the single, authoritative ‘anchor’. The double-presentation style is particularly popular for regional news programmes and breakfast television, where the man–woman combination is well established.
In the past, the two presenters would read complete intros alternately. In recent years, the ‘split-intro’ or ‘split-link’ has become the norm, with both presenters sitting close together in the same camera shot and sharing the link. For example:
Presenter one: ‘It looks like the fire that destroyed most of St Joseph’s School in Weston at the weekend was started deliberately. The police say they’re treating the case as arson.
Presenter two: According to Bristol Fire Service, school fires have become their most frequent callouts. They say on average there’s a fire in a school twice every week. They’re planning a new information drive aimed at schoolchildren. Emma Stevens reports.
This kind of split-link works only if it is quite concise. This one is twenty-three seconds long, with the script divided fairly evenly between the two presenters. It means each presenter will be in shot, listening to the other in a duly enthralled manner, for little more than ten seconds. Much longer than this, and the non-speaking presenter can become an awkward-looking distraction.
For really major stories, the intro should capture the sense of occasion. It should be deliberately slowed down if the news is grave. And it should capture the mood, as well as relating the facts. Most writers believe that on this kind of occasion, less is more. There is no need to inject drama into dramatic events. ‘A series of bomb attacks on London’s transport network has killed at least thirty-seven people and injured seven hundred others’ (BBC Radio 4 News, 7th July 2005). Facts, rhythm and dignity are required. Also required is a summary of the overall story.
This was the thirty-three-second introduction by newscaster Peter Sissons to BBC1’s Ten o’clock News on 11th September 2001. After the initial summarising sentence, it uses the present tense to describe the situation tonight, as it introduces the first report.
Good evening. America came under attack today from international terrorists – on a scale that made it more an act of war. The centre of New York is still smouldering, with America’s two tallest buildings in ruins. Terrorists also struck, with remarkable ease, at the heart of America’s defence, the Pentagon. Also in Washington, other government buildings, symbols of American power, were emptied as the terror spread. Air traffic is paralysed. Coast to coast, all key installations are on high alert. And amid the nightmare, the only estimate of fatalities is that they could run into many thousands.
It must have been a difficult intro to write, bearing in mind that most of the viewers would have known what had happened already. But the principles for writing the intro for the exceptional event are not much different from those required for the routine story. The core of the story is encapsulated in the first punchy sentence, in this case, ‘America came under attack today from international terrorists – on a scale that made it more an act of war.’ (The reference to an act of war proved to be prophetic, as in subsequent months the USA’s ‘War against Terrorism’ became the long-term response to the events on that day.)
This was Jane Hill’s studio introduction as she presented the BBC evening news on the day of the space shuttle Columbia accident in February 2003.
Good evening. Flags are flying at half mast across the United States tonight. Seven astronauts lost their lives when the space shuttle Columbia broke up, forty miles above Texas, on its return from a sixteen-day mission. Debris has been found across hundreds of miles. President Bush has led the mourning, calling it a day of great sadness for the families and the nation. NASA has suspended all shuttle flights and launched an investigation.
In this case, the first sentence could be deleted. But the decision to start with flags at half-mast captured the mood of the USA, and acknowledged that most viewers would already have heard about the Columbia disaster, which had happened several hours earlier. Also, the intro immediately followed the programme headlines, which had shown the key image of the shuttle breaking up and given the key facts.
The intro uses short sentences. There are no descriptive adjectives. It is plain and simple. And it is only twenty-five seconds long because this was the start of a fairly short weekend news bulletin, and the reports had to be quite compact.
Should our intro mention that the story is an exclusive? You might think that the perfect news programme would be composed entirely of exclusives, and the audience would be mightily impressed as one followed another. It would be a serious mistake to think this way. The tabloid press may have ‘exclusive’ splashed across nearly every page, but in broadcasting it usually sounds like serious oversell and self-consciousness.
In the past, the policy of both ITN and BBC news was to avoid the word ‘exclusive’, except for unusually enterprising and important stories. Brian Barron’s interview with the deposed Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, a year after he had fled and disappeared, deserved the adjective ‘exclusive’, because so many journalists had been looking for him, and it had been a very difficult operation to penetrate Saudi security to reach him in secrecy.
More recently, I think the word ‘exclusive’ can be heard in intros more frequently, particularly in regional news magazines. I think it sounds uncomfortable for routine stories to be called exclusive, and by trumpeting that we’ve found a story ourselves, we might be reminding the audience that newspapers are much better at uncovering original stories than broadcasters, who apply most of their energies to the complex logistics of electronic coverage rather than door-knocking or investigations.
As an alternative to saying ‘exclusive’, the vogue construction of ‘The BBC has learned that …’ or … ‘ITV News has discovered that …’ is particularly irritating. It makes the broadcaster seem to be the subject of the story, and raises expectations of a momentous revelation – expectations that invariably are dashed. How about this one from BBC Radio Four in March 2003? ‘The BBC has learned that the population of ruddy ducks is to be culled because they are aggressively mating with the indigenous species of white-faced ducks.’ I would cull this phraseology quite aggressively. Put the news first.
Reporters working on location, and preparing to send their radio despatches or television packages back to base by satellite, phone or internet, will usually write a studio intro. It is important that the commentary in the report follows the intro logically, without repeating information. Modern technology means that an increasing number of reporters have laptop computers with links to their newsroom, so that intros can be sent directly to the producer. Others may text their intro, or may still find it easier to dictate it over the phone in the traditional way. Sometimes the report, sent by ftp, line or satellite, and recorded at base, will begin with the reporter speaking the suggested intro.
The important thing to remember is that this intro will almost certainly be rewritten, with the programme producer and the presenter probably involved in the rewriting. The producer in the newsroom is in command of all the latest facts from various sources; the reporter on location may not have the full picture. The producer also knows how much will be said in the programme headlines, and where each individual report sits in the whole programme. Other reports may be covering different angles on the same subject. Presenters like to use their own phraseology, and will usually rewrite the intro information in their personal style.
So intros sent from reporters on location, regional offices or overseas bureaux should not be regarded as the finished article. These suggested intros are usually called cue material, indicating that they contain the information that should be in the cue, but not necessarily in a finished form. The BBC’s highly regarded correspondent, Brian Barron, who died of cancer in 2009 after a career of nearly forty years as a location correspondent, usually in the more challenging parts of the world, always sent back to base intro information that he called cue guidance.
Here’s an example of cue guidance sent by Barron following a rare trip into North Korea.
Daily food rations in the hard-line communist state of North Korea have been drastically cut. The World Food Programme says the new limit is below survival level. North Korea has been hit by drought followed by floods. The first ever British Embassy has just opened in Pyongyang, though western nations continue to pressure North Korea to abandon missile and nuclear weapon development. BB sent this exclusive report from the world’s most secretive and isolated state, which is hostile to western journalists.
As you can see, this is not written in Barron’s usual fluent style. He knows it will be rewritten. It is essentially what it claims to be, guidance on the facts that should be covered in the intro, which his report will follow. It gives the writer in the newsroom suggestions on acceptable phrases, such as ‘hard-line communist state’ and ‘the world’s most secretive and isolated state’, and suggests that maybe the producer would like to give this report the ‘exclusive’ tag!
If you are a journalist in a newsroom, writing intros based on the cue guidance or cue material sent by the correspondent in the field, make sure the essential facts proposed are included. Otherwise the report itself (which you won’t be able to change when it arrives just before transmission) may not make sense to the audience.
Any casualty figures in cue guidance should be checked carefully. You will often want to include them in the first line of an intro, but they can change up to the last moment before transmission. So if the cue guidance says, ‘Twelve people have been killed and nearly a hundred injured in a suicide bombing …’, it indicates that the latest casualty figures will be in the cue, and these were the latest the reporter knew at the time of sending the report. They may not be definitive.
For this reason, correspondents on location rarely include casualty figures in their reports unless they are broadcasting live. They expect the latest figures to be in the intro.
For many years, Sian Williams has presented BBC Breakfast and has probably written a thousand intros. On the corporation’s College of Journalism website (www.bbc.co.uk/journalism), she summarises the technique of writing an intro that will be faithful to the facts, will lead smoothly into the report, and will make the viewers want to watch.
Find out as much as you can about the story. Highlight the bits you think are important, and then establish what is known as the top line – the key part of the story that you want to sell to the audience. Know your audience. A script that you write for BBC3 [youth channel] will be different from the script for a Radio 4 audience [older/educated]. You’re selling a story to that audience, so put your best line at the top to hook them. Bear in mind that your headline and first intro must work together. For example, for the story about the plane landing in the Hudson River just off New York, the headline was: ‘Hailed as a hero – the pilot who crash-landed his plane into New York’s Hudson River’. The intro really needed to say something else, so we started with a quote from one of the survivors, ‘“The engine blew and everyone started saying their prayers” – that was one passenger’s account of the terrifying moment when a US Airways plane lost the use of both of its engines over New York.’ Read your intro script back aloud in case you stumble over some words. Don’t tell the whole story. Double check the facts. Check them with the correspondent. You can never be too sure.
The western journalistic tradition of turning information into stories taps into some of the fundamental ways in which we think and view the world around us. Neurological scientists tell us that our brains receive a huge amount of information every second, and we automatically filter these signals provided by our senses, concentrating on just a few that are important at any one moment. This filtering follows patterns learned from birth. We recognise familiar patterns, from the basic rhythm of night and day to more complex patterns of movement, which enable us to do something very complicated such as driving a car. In his television series The Human Mind, Professor Robert Winston demonstrated that, while we all find it difficult to remember a large number of bare facts, our memory works very much better when it is asked to recall narrative patterns. ‘When we invent simple stories to memorise facts, we set up lines of communication into the key receptors of the brain.’ Storytelling helps us to identify with something, and to remember it.
The techniques of narrative journalism borrow quite a lot from stories in literature or folk tales. Very often, our news stories will have a central character. The character may be a person. Sometimes it is a group of people – the Red Cross mission in Iraq, England football fans in Turkey, the Ulster Unionist Party, or the residents of a Welsh village. Sometimes it is a place – a hospital, a school, or a factory. It might be a thing – the Mir Space Station or the Elgin Marbles. Sometimes the central character is just the main event – the bus bomb in Jerusalem, or the earthquake in China. If you ask yourself, ‘who or what is this story about?’ and you are not quite sure of the answer, perhaps you can adjust the angle or line of approach to make sure it has a central focus.
For example, a story about analysts in the City of London anticipating tax rises in the next budget (not much of a central character there, unless it’s the Stock Exchange) might be better told as a story about the Chancellor and his need to fund public spending through unpopular measures; or it might be a story about low-paid taxpayers and pensioners who are increasingly fearful of more taxes to come. The angle of approach can make it easier for the audience to identify with the narrative.
As in any fictional story, our factual narratives should introduce the audience to the character (central subject) immediately, persuade them to be interested, and hold their attention until the end.
For many years, there has been a tendency in print-journalism training to describe news stories as ‘pyramids’. I think this means that the point of the story is sharp and succinct, and it is supported by more detailed information in layers. This conventional view suggests that, to shorten a story, the sub-editor can simply cut from the bottom without altering the core meaning or losing any essential facts. I am not convinced that this idea helps us to write broadcast scripts.
When I first started working in broadcast news, the pyramid theory had been adopted from newspapers. It was expected practice to present your radio or television report to the producer with an overall duration, and one or two so-called ‘early-outs’, or optional early endings to the report, to help the programme finish precisely on time. These early-outs, timed to the second, would indicate the end of a sentence, or the end of a clip of interview, when it would be possible to cut back sharply to the studio presenter, to save a few seconds. I am pleased to say that this awful practice has almost disappeared. Broadcast news stories should be written as an organic whole according to the time allocated. Often the last sentence is the one that provides most insight, impact or food for thought.
I prefer to think of broadcast news stories as linear. They should start by attracting your attention, then quickly develop your interest, and progress to either a conclusion or a question about what will be the next chapter. If you think of this line of interest as a simple graph, the line shoots up at the start, as you attract the interest of the audience, it plateaus as you add explanation and context, then rises again as you carry the story forward with new and interesting information.
Georges Franju: ‘Movies should have a beginning, a middle and an end.’ Jean-Luc Godard: ‘Yes, but not necessarily in that order.’
(Film Symposium in Monaco, 1960)
This well known observation by the French film director Godard is a clue to why his films had an unusual quality. They were intriguing, sometimes baffling, sometimes coming together only in the final reel. I don’t think this artistic approach works in broadcast news, where we must be sure that a mass audience understands everything as clearly as possible, from the beginning to the end.
Very often, the best structure of a broadcast news report follows the chronology of the event. This may seem obvious, but it is certainly not the case in newspaper journalism.
An account of President Sarkozy’s 2008 state visit to Britain in a morning paper (reporting what happened the day before) would be very dull if it said ‘first he did this, and then he did that’. The report would aim to pull together strands and moments in a mosaic style, to create a portrait of how the day would be remembered, with some comment about the true significance. For example, the Independent began with the main points of his address to Parliament: ‘… he heaped praised on Britain and called for the two countries to write a new page in our common history’, then related the charm offensive of the President’s wife Carla Bruni, who ‘curtsied confidently as she met the Queen. And she received a taste of old-fashioned British chivalry when the Prince of Wales kissed her hands as she stepped off the plane at Heathrow.’ In broadcasting, dislocating time like this is risky, because it can confuse the listener or viewer. This is particularly true of television, where images have a natural time-line. If we see the French President addressing Parliament, then greeting the Queen earlier, then pictures of his arrival at the airport, it seems time has gone into reverse, and simply won’t work. The key points from the address and the overall impression of the visit should be in the headline and introduction, but the reporter’s package is usually best as a chronology.
It’s interesting to note that modern technology reminds broadcast journalists that stories develop over time. Tape recorders can tell you precisely when a piece of sound was recorded. Cameras stamp the images they record with time-code. More significantly, computer-editing for radio and television is based on the idea of a ‘time-line’ that appears on the screen. We can see that time is the logical pattern of our narrative and helps us to relate the story clearly.
The BBC’s brilliant correspondent Brian Barron, interviewed for this book, explained how TV reports must have a logical structure.
When I moved from radio to TV in 1971, one grizzled newsroom editor voiced the mantra, ‘You need a beginning, a middle and an end to any television package you are going to do.’ I think that more or less still holds up, though there are an infinite number of possibilities of how to cover those three points.
Barron did not recommend putting these three basic sequences in reverse order, because television is composed of sequences of shots, which are edited together skilfully so that the viewer scarcely notices the edits. Many television reports are composed of sequences of sequences.
They tend to make sense if they follow logical patterns. For example: limousine drives up – children wave flags – the Queen emerges – the mayor steps forward for a handshake – crowds applaud – Queen enters building – inside she inspects exhibition. Obviously the picture editor is not going to use a shot of the Queen inside the building followed by her entering it.
Equally, it is disruptive for the viewer if one moment it is daylight, then we see a night-time shot, then it’s daylight again; or if the pictures jump between interior and exterior shots. Even jumping between the present and the past sometimes happens, when a shot of archive film is used too briefly in the middle of a report. Writers of television news have to use the chronology of events and familiar sequences much more than newspaper journalists.
Sport gives us a good example of this difference between print and broadcasting. Football reports in newspapers routinely describe the winning goal, then describe the goals that were scored earlier in the game. This style follows the idea that news stories will begin with the latest or most dramatic development, then will recap the background. I have once seen a football report on a TV news programme following this idea – showing the last goal first. It did not work very well. If the big talking point of the match was whether the ball crossed the goal-line in injury time, then maybe you can show that controversial moment first, then relate the events that led to the moment of controversy. But in the vast majority of cases, keeping to the chronology is best. Showing the goals in the right order makes sense to the viewers as a summary of what happened.
When the England rugby team won the World Cup Final, it was settled in the last minute of injury time by a drop-goal from Jonny Wilkinson. Nearly all the newspaper reports began with that heart-stopping moment, but the TV news highlights on all channels stuck to the chronology, building up to the winning kick. In the same way, relating the events of a news story in the order they took place will confuse no-one. The intro can highlight the main talking point of the day. The reporter’s account of the event is usually structured best as a chronology.
The main exception to the chronological structure is in the reporting of a precise news event that happened earlier, when the script will first need to set the scene now. This is often necessary on television, where only aftermath pictures are generally available. This is Gavin Hewitt’s 2002 report for the BBC Ten o’clock News on a serious rail crash at Potters Bar, which had happened that morning. Note that he uses first the pictures that were taken first, to establish the scene shortly after the accident, and therefore has no difficulty in starting the narrative with the frightening moment when the loose carriage was careering along the station platform, before going back to the moments leading up to the accident.
This was the scene at Potters Bar station today at around one o’clock. The last of four carriages of a train from King’s Cross to King’s Lynn lying across the platform wedged under the station roof. The train had been travelling at over ninety miles per hour when its last carriage began shuddering. People on the platform were terrified as the carriage, having broken loose, tore through a waiting room and slid towards them. [Short interviews with passengers who had been on the platform.]
The first sign of trouble came as the train approached a bridge just outside the station. The driver reported feeling a bump. The last carriage sideswiped the bridge; pieces broke loose, falling on the cars underneath. [Interview with witness.]
A section of the wheels flew off and the carriage mounted the platform, turning on its side. The first three carriages continued down the track. Those inside knew the train was in difficulty. [Interview with passenger describing how they all hung on as it rocked.]
A major incident was declared …
Hewitt’s report went on to describe the rescue operation, including interviews with some passengers who had been pulled from the wreckage, and with local people who had run from their houses to help. It ended by looking ahead to the accident enquiry, saying that investigators were focusing on a set of points just outside the station, and reflecting that this was the latest in a series of damaging accidents on Britain’s railways.
Ending the report by looking to the future is fairly common practice. On television, many correspondents will put their ‘piece to camera’ at or near the end of the report, so that they can sum up in a direct and personal way, and suggest what is likely to happen next. Appearing on camera in this way can also overcome the problem of what to show when talking about how the story might develop. It’s quite difficult to film the future. The concluding piece to camera has become something of a cliché in recent years. Beware of writing something trite just to try to throw the story forward in time, such as, ‘tomorrow will bring more challenges’ or even worse ‘only time will tell’.
Time is the most obvious familiar pattern that will help us to relate the story clearly. It is interesting to note how many television feature-reports from foreign countries begin at dawn and end in the evening. Or sometimes they relate a journey, which takes us through an area in a set period of time.
Another pattern is the circle, with the report starting and finishing with the same person, place or scene. For example, ‘Joan Smith has been waiting for a hip operation for two years. Today she was told her operation had been postponed, for the fourth time …’ is a well established type of opening, which introduces the audience to a human example illustrating a general problem, in this case the over-stretched health service. We can relate to Joan. We hear from Joan about her pain and discomfort. Then the report moves on to explain the problem. The structure of this reporter package will be much more satisfying for the audience if, after a sequence at the hospital, and perhaps an interview clip with the Health Secretary, it returns to Joan at the end (still waiting and getting angry), rather than apparently forgetting about her.