Media

Here's a look at the front page of today's Hindustan Times, Delhi edition. Once again, we start with the lead (Nuke Bill passage on course). And once again, we find mistakes in the intro itself: The international relations committee of the US House of Representatives began considering a bill seeking an exemptions for India from the discriminatory nuclear regime that presently existing under US law. Early indications, based on votes on amendments to the bill, indicated that of the 45 committee...

If you have ever worked as a reporter, you would know that no two reporters can use the same language to describe the same set of events. Something like fingerprints, you know. But the Zee News and Times of India correspondents who filed the story on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seeking the Tamil Nadu Speaker's sanction to prosecute J Jayalalithaa have somehow managed to do the impossible. Here's the Zee News story proudly slugged "Bureau report": New Delhi, June 26: The CBI has...

Here's a look at the front page of today's Times of India, Delhi edition. Let's start with the lead (In Congress, a battle rages for quote crown): HRD minister Arjun Singh's suspected attempt to appropriate the political ownership of the move to introduce OBC quota in Central institutions has finally run into in-house resistance. Suspected attempt? Who is suspecting Arjun Singh of doing anything? The next para says: Social justice minister Meira Kumar has questioned the justification of the HRD...

One of the best ways to tighten a copy is to do away with redundant words. Many redundancies crop up in copies because of a reporter or a sub-editor's desire to add colour to a story. This Reuters creed provides a glaring example (Two former ministers arrested over Kashmir sex scandal; Reuters; June 20, 2006): An angry mob ransacked the house of a woman suspected of running the sex ring in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, soon after it broke in April. The woman and three others were...

It is funny when the same word/set of words is used differently in the same publication on the same day. The Times of India did it on June 26, 2006. First, the incorrect usage (Economist PM goes 'ballistic'; The Times of India; June 26, 2006): With contracts worth Rs 3,500 crore already being signed for its mass production to begin, the Army is now raising a special BrahMos regiment to use it as a precision land-to-land weapon. Moreover, work is well underway to configure it for the Sukhoi-30MKI...

Here's a look at the front page of today's Hindustan Times, Delhi edition. The lead story (Nuke deal faces first vote today) starts with a typo in the intro itself: Indian circles are guardedly optimistic one the eve of the first vote in the US Congress on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Yes, it should have been on, not one. Those of us who have worked on the desk know that typos happen. We can never justify such mistakes, and we don't make fun of typos (i.e. of each other) either. We all make...

Hyphens again, folks. You need to be careful while creating a noun from a phrasal verb. By and large, the rule of the thumb says that you need to hyphenate the noun. Read this (Big names in sleaze story; Hindustan Times; June 25, 2006): While Anand Suman Singh, a Uttaranchal Sahitya Kala Sanskriti Parishad member has been arrested for allegedly procuring call girls to supply them to politicians and bureaucrats, speculations are rife about a massive cover up to prevent more names being made...

Deny does not mean the same as rebut (which means argue to the contrary, producing evidence), or refute (which means to win such an argument). See this (Big names in sleaze story; Hindustan Times; June 25, 2006): "If there was pressure, Singh may have escaped arrest. All the accused have already been sent to judicial custody," stated SSP Dehra Dun SK Gunjyal refuting charges of political pressure on the police. Gunjyal did not refute anything, he merely denied charges of political pressure. He...

There's so much of violence and blood around today that journalists seem to have become inured to the usage of words pertaining to killings, deaths, violence. So much so that many have started believing that from killing to execution, and from massacre to carnage, they all mean the same thing. Read this extract from "Delhi Police bringing Abu Salem to town" (Hindustan Times; June 25, 2006): On Dawood's orders, Salem and Sharma had hatched the plot to assassinate Babloo Srivastava. On November 1...

There are no problems with hypens; inept writers have a problem with hyphens. Most subs have the morbid — almost pathologically irresistible — tendency to insert hyphens as if to assert their command over the language. Consider this sentence from a June 19 Press Trust of India (PTI) creed. Hindustan Times did not think it fit to drop the hyphen either. State police and various security agencies have been questioning the terrorist Manzoor Alam, arrested from Sheshnag, en-route to the Holy cave...