Here’s a look at the front page of today’s Times of India, Delhi edition. Let’s start with the lead once again (We killed Rajiv, confesses LTTE). There's a bloomer in the first line itself:
Fifteen years after a LTTE suicide bomber killed Rajiv Gandhi in Sriperumbudur, the Tamil rebel outfit on Tuesday admitted its responsibility for the crime and delivered a public apology.
It should be an LTTE suicide bomber and not a. The second sentence of the intro reads:
In an interview to a TV network on Tuesday, Anton Balasingham, LTTE ideologue and one of Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's confidants, executed a major shift of policy, describing the May 21, 1991, killing of Rajiv Gandhi as "a monumental historical tragedy".
One fails to wonder why this TV network has not been named. It is not that the paper does not name companies. The first anchor clearly names HSBC. No, it is not that the daily does not name companies which are in the news business and in other cases it does. The second anchor does not name the mobile service provider. More of that later. If executed was used to add colour to the copy, it certainly made for a sick pun. If you leave aside the killing bit, execute means to do a piece of work, perform a task, etc. In this case, it wasn't. Execute also means to successfully perform a skilful action. It wasn't so either in this case. Execute can also mean to follow the instructions laid out in a legal document. Even this wasn't so. Maybe the sub wanted to mean that Balasinghan's statement signified a major shift of policy.
"As far as that event is concerned...I would say it is a great tragedy... a monumental historical tragedy... which we deeply regret, and we call upon the government of India and people of India to be magnanimous to put the past behind... and to approach the ethnic question in a different perspective," Balasingham said.
You don't approach or see anything in a perspective; it should have been from a different perspective.
Thus far, the LTTE has denied that it was responsible for the killing of Rajiv Gandhi. Reacting to the LTTE admission, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said: "It's good that after so many years they (LTTE) have admitted to having killed Rajiv Gandhi.
Inconsistent use of tenses. To play it safe, one must stick to the same tense throughout the copy, especially if reported speech is used. The correct usage should have been: "Thus afar, the LTTE had denied" that it was responsible for the killing of Gandhi. The story about the Indo-US nuclear pact (Nuclear deal clears hurdle in US House) had been buried in page 9 yesterday. A brief in the News Digest panel had carried a pointer to the inside story, while HT had the hottest story of the day as the lead. Today, the story (somehow) in TOI looks like the second lead. The display makes it look like the lead, but the headline size of the top box on the LTTE is bigger. Actually, the LTTE box should have had a smaller headline font and a marginally thicker border. Anyway, let's leave that for now, for discussing newspaper design is not in my mandate. There's a mistake in the intro of this story as well:
History was on the verge of being written on Capitol Hill, Washington, when the US Congress took the first stride towards endorsing the India-US nuclear deal by turning down opponents' amendment by convincing margins.
It sounds as though the same amendment was defeated by convincing margins in different places. No, it wasn't so. We gather from the copy that six amendments were voted on. So, it should have been amendments. Somewhere later in the story:
The US administration threw its weight behind the legislation, working on the Congress to remove "deal-breaking" clauses, according to sources.
Sources finally find mention in the seventh para. The "according to sources" bit is needless, I would say. After six paras, the sources have hardly any bearing on the story. The next para has something which might have been an oversight. I need to point this out since I have seen most subs (who worked under me) making the same verb-number agreement mistake:
On Monday, NGOs like Friends Committee for Nuclear Legislation was seen distributing tin cans on Capitol Hill with the words, "CAN the Indian nuclear deal."
It should be were and not was. The verb has to be in agreement with NGOs and not the NGO mentioned, Friends Committee for Nuclear Legislation. The last para is not wrong grammatically, but has its share of mistakes:
While this is only a statement of policy and not binding on India, New Delhi could have done without it. It's liable to resurrect passions among political parties, particularly as UP elections draw nearer.
Firstly, you don't resurrect passions; you arouse them. If it is indeed a question of resurrection, the background (to the resurrection bit) should have been made obvious to the reader. Secondly, one must be careful with adverbs. The UP elections have drawn nearer, yes. Tomorrow it would be nearer still. Next week it will be even more nearer. Get my point? Only one para caught my attention in the next story (Navy's spies catch Chinese subs):
"These three Kilo-class submarines, armed with the latest Klub-S cruise missiles, are the last batch of the eight contracted by China from Russia in a $2-billion deal in 2002," said a top source.
One has to be a bit more specific with sources. What source was this? Defence ministry? Home ministry? Navy? Now the anchors. The first one (Bangalore HSBC man defrauds UK clients) starts off:
In what appeared a repeat of the infamous MsourceE BPO fraud a year ago, an HSBC employee in Bangalore was charged with illegally accessing confidential information of customers in UK and siphoning off large amounts of money from their accounts.
The second one (Hacker gets details of top cops' calls) began:
In an incident which is likely to put mobile service providers under fresh scrutiny, an Agra youth procured call details of top bureaucrats and Delhi Police officers from the website of a leading service provider and then demanded Rs 1 crore from the company for not going public with his operation.
I made a passing mention about these two stories earlier. There seems to be a gross inconsistency in naming companies. HSBC is specifically named in the first, and you would have to be told by someone else that the "leading service provider" in the second story is Airtel. The discrepancy in the copies seem to have little to do with journalism and more with corporate proclivities. Let's get back to the actual copy. Prepositions, when wrongly used can change the meaning of a sentence altogether. The with here changes the meaning totally. "Going public with his operation" would make it seem the youth wanted to launch operations in full public glare. In fact, all he wanted to do was tell the public about his dubious achievement. The word that could have substituted with is about. You might argue that the about still does not make the meaning clear. Yes, mere substitution will not work for the clause does not seem to be complete. A few more words would have made it crystal clear. But the sub probably had tired himself/herself out by this point. In case you did not notice, the intro is a sentence that runs into 51 words. It is the longwinding, improperly-punctuated sentence which is the problem. Apart from the with bit of course. Something more from the HSBC story:
These details were passed on to some fraudsters in UK who diverted funds — to the tune of 2,33,000 pounds — from clients' acounts, according to a complaint lodged by HDPI with the Bangalore cyber crime police.
Pound(s) can denote money. It is also a measurement of weight. The amount should have been written as £2,33,00. Better still, as £233,000. One rarely sees the currency term written out in words when associated with a number. Maybe, the sub did not know how to write out pound as a symbol since the keyboard has the dollar sign ($) but not the pound sign (£). Here's a tip: put the numlock on and hit alt+0163. Had enough of page one? I certainly have.
