OF HEADLINES, TENSE EDITORS AND MIXING-UP TENSES

Media coverage can revolve around current issues, past events or even future occurrences. The reader, viewer or listener would not find it hard to follow a story framed on whichever time frame, especially if the context is logical. This is achievable as long as editors don't get tense, to the point of mixing-up tenses.

A news story can begin with the anticipation of a future happening, dash to past events, before settling on present issues.

This would still make sense, if the reporting tenses don't imply an element of time travel is required.

The date of writing this post is June 28th 2019.

This newspaper article was published on 26th June.

The story states the winner of the contest to replace Theresa May as UK prime minister will be announced on July 23rd.

But the headline states:

'New British PM named on July 23'

A reader has every reason to get tense, with this lack of attention to tense matters.

Or is this a prime example of a future, past impossible tense?

Cue in the tension headache!

FRAUDULENT TV CONTENT AND ON AIR FRAUDSTERS

Kenyan television can be a fraud. If you tune in, you're not sure whether you are adding to your level of knowledge, or if what you have is being subtracted from. The broadcasts have many learning opportunities. But there's also a real danger of eroding one's intelligence. A viewer can feel defrauded, by on air fraudsters, under the guise of content editors, or disguised as program producers.

In the above screenshot, it's not clear what was the intention of using the 'word':

'FRAUDS'

- Is it a proper conjugation from the root word 'fraud'?

- Does it even correctly convey the sense of somebody doing something wrong?

- Is it a legitimate verb? Or an illegitimate noun?

So many pertinent questions...one obvious answer.

It's either there's a false self-confidence by media practitioners in their ability to make up words, or more accurately, perhaps, there's a need for more English lessons in that newsroom.

It's a fraud, I tell you... and I hope you don't trust these frauds!

OF STYLEBOOK AND LOGIC-DEFYING EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

A reputable media house has internal editorial guidelines, to achieving a standardised approach in gathering, processing and publishing or broadcasting content. Such a stylebook acts as a critical reference point. The rules can be borrowed from established journalistic enterprises, and customised to suit specific requirements. But some editorial decisions defy logic.

In the above live broadcast story tag, there's a rather strange looking word contraction.

There ought to be a sensible way of optimising the use of limited space, because the need to communicate should never-ever be sacrificed.

Shortening of words should thus be done in a way that the audience can still decipher what the full word is.

And, there are certain rules that still need to be observed.

An apostrophe, for example, indicates that letters are missing in between...but the last letter retains the logical sequence of the full word.

The word 'international' can be shortened to: INT'L.

But...what is one to make out of: NT'L?

FROM MEDIA MONOTONY TO MEDIA MORONITY

The content across Kenyan media outlets can be very monotonous. You tune in to one news channel, and most likely stay there, because if you see one, it's like you've seen all of them. But nothing shouts lazy journalism more than when one publisher regurgitates what another has already put out. That's when media monotony morphs to media moronity.

The story of how Kenyan cars are registered using differentiated number plates makes quite a fascinating reading.

But, does it mean other media outlets should just copy what has already been published?

New angles can be used to add value to the original content, and still make the replicated read relevant.

You get a sense that this was not the intention here, because someone even decided to use the same photograph to illustrate the lifted story.

The take home lesson?

The biggest fan of a Kenyan media house...is a rival media house!