Australian Journalism Shockers

A bold error with a hidden message? Readers left wondering.

2011-05-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

For over 24 hours already* the Sydney Morning Herald has had the following error in this article about a dispute between Cambodia and Thailand:

In Saturday's closed session, the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, baldly said Thailand had invaded his country

Assuming Hun Sen doesn't talk badly (and even if he did it wouldn't be cool to say so) and because he has a full head of hair (see picture below) the writer probably meant to say:

Hun Sen, boldly said Thailand had invaded his country

Now, if the writer really wanted to use the word 'bald', perhaps as a weird way of telling us that the 58 year old couldn't possibly have such a lush head of natural hair, then perhaps the best option would have been to write:

...a bald-faced Hun Sen, said Thailand had invaded his country

and then file the article in the celebrity section of the newspaper.

But the journalist didn't do either of those things, and even though nobody cares that's still

A picture of Hun Sen

* This means it's official as it wasn't corrected after being hastily filed, for example.

Small English cancer detected in Western Australia

2011-01-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

This article in WA Today includes some errors which are not just annoying, but because they appear in print in Australia they actually chip away at the common English language we use.

The first which leaps out of the page is the use of "highly-risky" in this paragraph:

It is understood the man was engaging in a BASE jump, a highly-risky practise in which people engage in extreme jumps from elevated locations and then deploy a parachute before reaching land.

I've heard highly-risky a lot in some countries in Asia so it's not new to me, but it's just bad English nonetheless. That's OK for people using English as a second language in Asia - if they want to say that then go ahead - but it's just not on in an Australian newspaper.

The second error you may have noticed in the paragraph above seems quite minor: "before reaching land". Hmmm, that would be OK if the BASE jumper was, say, jumping from a boat at sea during a triathlon, but if this kind of error passes through unchallenged to the keeper it undermines our English because new Australian immigrants reading this in the paper are going to be confused or even learn the wrong thing and if enough people learn that it changes the meaning for the rest of us and English becomes less precise and clear.

So WA Today should do better as this is

3 drafts in one article!

2009-12-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

This article's been online about 18 hours now and hasn't been updated, so I thought I'd share it.

In an article with a very long title news.com.au reports that "Second woman claims affair as police to charge Tiger Woods over car crash."

Which is all well and good except that the story is told about 3 times.

Early in the article we learn that:

"He could be fined $US164 ($179) and lose four points off his licence."

A few paragraphs on the article reveals that:

"He could be fined $US164 ($179) and lose four points off his licence."

Similarly an early paragraph which says:

"The investigation has determined that Mr Woods is at fault in the crash. This afternoon the FHP is in the process of issuing a uniform citation of careless driving to Mr Woods," Williams said.

is repeated only slightly differently further on as:

"The investigation has determined that Mr Woods is at fault in the crash. This afternoon the FHP is in the process of issuing a uniform citation of careless driving to Mr Woods," Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) area commander Major Cindy Williams said.

And if you weren't confused enough by all that, a triple whammy hits you with:

Another spokeswoman, Kim Montes said was [sic] no other charges would be laid.

and later:

Another FHP spokeswoman, Kim Montes, said no other charges would be laid against Woods or anyone else.

and later still:

Ms Montes said no further action would be taken against Woods over the accident.

There's more like that - as I said the same story told three times almost word for word - and no human or computer picked it up.

And I note that when I started this blog noone was talking loudly about the public paying for online news content. While there may be a case for that, I think they have to pull their socks up a bit first as this is hardly a ringing endorsement of good journalism or site management that would encourage any punter to part with their money.

You don't need to be Einstein, so this is merely
but it shouldn't happen anyway.

Original article, in triplicate, can be found here.

Can Computers Really Replace Journalists?

2009-11-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

I suspect this error was made by a computer rather than a human.

Referring to Tokyo airport the interviewee is quoted as saying: "...it's 65km out, by bus it's about one.five hours, by taxi it can cost anything up to $300."

Obviously the interviewee actually spoke the words "one point five hours" or "one and a half hours", which are commonly written as 1.5 hours. Simple mistake - for a computer.

This error appeared in this article about a Qantas nightmare.

It's

So let's hope more real-life flesh-and-blood journalists get a crack at writing articles in future.

Reverse engineering the thesaurus.

2009-10-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

This report is about technically correct yet poor English which should have been rooted out in school. So ultimate blame for the following rests with the Education Department.

This SMH article says

"Mr Penman has denied the claim and is pondering legal action of his own..."

Pondering? Hmmm, yes and no, but mainly no.

It appears that the thesaurus chose this word, like a very subtle reminder of that Friends episode where Joey uses a thesaurus to translate "They're warm, nice people with big hearts" into "They're humid, pre-possessing homosapiens with full-sized aortic pumps". This isn't exactly how 'pondering' should be used either.

If I reverse engineer "pondering" using my own thesaurus there are many more suitable alternatives for a weighty issue such as legal action, such as "considering", "contemplating", "deliberating" or even "thinking about".

For fluffier issues such as what colour to paint the wall, "pondering" is indeed a reasonable choice, along with "wondering", "mulling", "musing" and the universal "thinking about".

English needs to change with the times and adapt, and our professional media lead this, but this fancy word just made it hard to read and is thus

The article that shouldn't have been at all.

2009-10-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

This article on The Advertiser's "Adelaide Now" site has 107 words which should never have been published.

The whole article is a shocker as it reports "A PERSON has been struck down and killed by a train at Bowden...TransAdelaide later said it believed the death to be suicide"... err, which is when the entire article should have been deleted (or a seriously new angle found).

It was published at 9.45pm, possibly from a mobile device as there is a spelling error, so I guess this won't appear in the print edition tomorrow. Let's see.

This is a definite

UPDATE:
This article appeared in the following day's print edition but without mention of a suicide.
Meanwhile on the website, by next morning the comments section had been removed.

Rewritten but not deleted.

2009-10-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

This wasn't the type of error I had in mind when I started this blog, but it's a simple editing error which, if computers can't spot it, at least a human could (or vice versa).

In this article about two boats, this paragraph:

Their boat, carrying more than 250 ethnic Tamils, was intercepted last weekend by the Indonesian navy en route to Australia and taken to the Javanese city of Merak.

was followed closely by this paragraph:

The boat had been intercepted by the Indonesian navy en route to Australia and taken to the Javanese port city of Merak.

One would guess that the 2nd paragraph was copied-and-pasted then rewritten as the first and someone forgot to delete the original, as the repeated words highlighted in bold make up over 80% of the 2nd paragraph.

Could happen to anyone on a deadline - so it's

October Record!

2009-10-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

This is another heartbeat update as we pass the halfway mark of October, to report that I haven't found ANY grammatical errors in the Australian media whatsoever this month! Not a single one! This is fantastic!

I know I wasn't dreaming all those errors in the past, but I feel that I've awoken to a new day of easy and pleasurable reading.

So in this case, an empty blog is a good blog!

32-year ambiguity

2009-09-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

SMH reported "Polanski faces weeks in jail before an appeal against his arrest over a 32-year statutory rape charge is heard in court".

OK, so we know this refers to a charge from 32 years ago, or a 32 year old charge. But the way it was written was
and made me look twice. I don't think it's technically correct - at least not in Australia.

No news is good news.

2009-09-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is a "heartbeat" placeholder to say that this is blog is not dead or abandoned - but for the last two days I have found NO errors on any Australian media web sites! That's a real turn around - especially for my fairfax reading! Great stuff! :)

I noticed that a news.com.au web site had some spelling errors in one article which obviously missed the spell checker, but that didn't affect the quality of the journalism so I won't blog it.

Note that I am not actively seeking out errors - just noting the ones that crop up in my natural daily reading.

Regards,
Troy

SMH homophones?

2009-09-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

In this article, the journalist has confused the homophones “two” and “to”. If you grow up speaking English this mistake is a real no-no.

The “the high cost of connecting two lines” should of course be “the high cost of connecting to lines” – unless the journalist meant something completely different in which case the whole sentence should have been written differently. Sigh. It shouldn’t be this hard to read the paper.

This is at the very least rather

Read it for yourself here: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/george-in-a-spin-over-noisy-wind-power-x2026-20090920-fwsl.html

SMH Plural Misuse

2009-09-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

This article by SMH reports that “Her skins and nails returned” in reference to the woman’s own skin and fingernails.

Like fingernails on a blackboard that’s a jarring example of English-as-a-second-language mistake. Unless talking about a hunter or a lizard, a native English speaker wouldn’t refer to skins in the plural.

This is:

Read it for yourself here: http://www.smh.com.au/world/out-of-the-darkness-after-nine-long-years-20090919-fw4s.html