Whether in print or electronic media, a lot is expected of journalists. Their trade is propagating news and the general expectation is that they must be versed in Swahili and English, as well as have good communication skills. The audience’s attention should be riveted on the news item for maximum effect.
This gets eroded substantially when the person giving the news becomes the focal point because of poor presentation. Take the case of a journalist being unable, because of ‘first language interference’, to make a pronunciation difference between election and erection.
The political high season is with us as time inexorably pushes politicians closer to the August 8, 2017 date with the electorate. For media, it is boon time. There is no shortage of news as incumbents and aspirants jostle for advantage. Journalists are spoilt for choice for, with limited space, it is impossible to cover all items of news on any given day. Television stations are also having field days hosting all manner of people; experts and analysts.
Analysis is not an exact science. Often, it is a matter of interpretation which assumes two forms; the subjective and the objective. While subjective analysis is anything goes, objective analysis is based on facts. One may not always agree with what is being presented but, no matter what, facts will stand scrutiny. Lately, you have been treated to a lot of analysis on party nominations.
The nominations exercise has made many a voter excitable, so much so that an excited reporter was heard saying ‘we have been giving you a blow to blow account of these particular primaries since 5 am’. Now, that is flabbergasting.
If the reporter meant a detailed account of the primaries when he used the phrase ‘blow to blow’, he lost his audience. The not-so-critical would understand the reporter meant ‘blow by blow’, but it is not for the reader or listener to second guess the journalist.
News must be concise and interesting. As an idiomatic expression, blow by blow simply means a detailed description of how an event happened. Not even in the context of being ‘excitable’ would ‘blow to blow’ make much sense were we to take licence, buoyed by the knowledge that language constantly mutates, to entertain it.
Borrowing from parliamentary procedure, where television cameras relay live images of crazed supporters of a politician whacking, kicking, stabbing or stoning supporters from the opposing camp, blow to blow might pass the first reading only because of the excitement or despair such scenes cause. But on closer scrutiny, the second reading, it would be proper to use the phrase blow for blow if say, two men, mostly, traded punches over nothing only to return home with puffed lips resembling mushed tomatoes.
President’s clarification
That aside, did President Uhuru Kenyatta pull a fast one on Kenyans after the botched Jubilee primaries on day one? The nominations failed spectacularly, made more glaring by earlier boasts that Jubilees primaries would be a shining beacon for a bumbling half-blind opposition. Hard pressed to explain Jubilees failure, the president drew a line between Un-prepared and Under-prepared. Many did not buy the explanation and actually questioned the difference.
As a preposition, ‘under’ is used to describe a level below a given threshold. The prefix ‘un’ means ‘not’ thus, unprepared is the short form of not prepared. The preposition ‘under’ therefore denotes a level of trying that did not meet standards. The adverb ‘not’, negating the state of ‘preparedness’ is in this context used to show a total lack of trying.
Because Jubilee opened some polling stations, and discounting the fact that they did not have enough ballot papers as a consequence of hubris or lack of foresight, that by itself shows the party tried but failed. Thus, President Uhuru Kenyatta was not wrong to make a distinction between ‘under prepared’ and ‘unprepared’ while shielding Jubilee from scorn.
In disseminating news, headlines are written to capture the reader’s attention. While going through one of the dailies, a headline ‘ 1 stabbed to death in Jubilee clash’, just above a Police Inspector’s photo grabbed my attention. A combination of words and a number, it was, at a glance, misleading.
The 1(one) first registered as the pronoun ‘I’ (the inspector in this case). Except in writing dates and serial numbers, which must always be in numbers, care should be taken when making reference to figures in texts. However, headlines have editorial licence to sometimes break rules of grammar.
