Why the media should avoid annoying cliches
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Aforementioned words Ordinarily, most of us use the word ‘leverage’ as a noun that means ‘to exert force by means of a lever’, but the business world uses ‘leverage’ to describe how a situation can be exploited to great advantage. In financial terms, leverage is ‘the ratio of a company’s loan capital (debt) to the value of its ordinary shares (equity). At the rate at which the aforementioned words have been used, they have become clichés.’ A cliché is defined as ‘an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel’. Nevertheless, clichés are not a ‘sin’ exclusive to the business world; the media has its own fair share. These include ‘launch investigations’, ‘move to court’, ‘fighting for his or her life’, ‘he will personally’, ‘no stone will be left unturned’, ‘hotly contested’, ‘eye-popping’, ‘in the wake of’, ‘game changer’, ‘burst into the national limelight’, ‘tongues wagging’, ‘media consultants’, ‘political analysts’ ‘the devil is in the details’, ‘closely watched contest’, ‘underscore’, ‘turned a blind eye” and ‘a myriad’. Bland expressionsSEE ALSO :Wanjigi wants ‘Nation’ to pay him Sh100m
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the quoted expressions, except that they are used for dramatic effect in news stories. Sometimes, if not used incorrectly, they are applied to merely complete a word count. The problem would arise if every other news story features the same bland expressions. Imagine reading several stories in one newspaper and encountering the same expressions in each of them. That would vindicate the claim that there is a form of laziness responsible for what some people consider dull stories. Someone critically ill cannot ‘fight for his life’ in hospital. He is helplessly lying there; the fighting (struggle) to save his life being undertaken by the medics attending to him in the theatre or intensive care unit. Ideally, a contest can either be ‘friendly’ or ‘bitter’, never cold or hot. Today, the media brands any Tom, Dick or Harry who can venture an opinion on anything an ‘analyst’ , ‘expert’ or ‘consultant’, yet some of the analyses’ are pedestrian at best. The media should not allow itself to be used to build peoples’ profiles that could be misleading to the public. Often, one comes across expressions like; ‘the police said they will not leave any stone unturned’. Finally though, the police don’t turn enough stones to find the maggots. Maybe it is because they look for evidence under the stones and refuse to think ‘outside the box’ that they fail to acquit themselves where serious investigative work is required.SEE ALSO :Standard Group, APA partner to reward creatives
While we were recently told that the murder of a female university student in Migori would take a couple of days to unravel, a week down the line it does not look promising. While ‘thinking outside the box’ is used to mean using unconventional means to solve a problem, the police are trained to follow specific rules and methodologies. Frankly, they are not equipped to ‘think outside the box’, but rather, inside it. Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The [email protected]