Hawaii Public Radio's War on the English Language

Suppose HPR’s Dave Lawrence delivered the news in Hawaiian pidgin and said things like “Today da Presiden wen talk story wit da Speaka of da House.” 

Or, what if he spoke the black slang known as ebonics and said things like “Yo, da Prez met wif da prime minister; knome sayin? 

It is safe to say that listeners would loudly protest and demand that newscasters speak proper (standard) English. Yet Lawrence and other HPR talkers get away with speaking in the horrible slang that I have dubbed broadcast pidgin. Here is the text of one of several emails I sent to NPR's Word Matters:  

Please, I’m on my knees begging you, please tell me why radio announcers, especially David Lawrence and others at HPR and NPR say things like, “Police reporting that a woman dying…” when they mean, “Police reported that a woman died…” It drives me crazy that you guys talk like this. No one else does. Even a third grader knows that it’s poor grammar. But nine out of ten times Lawrence and others at Public Radio put it like this.  

I bet you guys didn’t talk this way until you became radio announcers. Why? How does this unlearning good English come about? If your kids talked like this their English teachers would surely correct them. If they wrote this way their grades would suffer.  

I really, honestly want to know how HPR announcers learned this broadcast pidgin, which hates the verb “is” in all forms; and hates the simple past tense (-ed), and insists on the hideous and illogical pseudo-participle (the –ing form without some form of the verb “is”) instead. Was it from instructors in college classes or from bosses on the job? Or is it a bad habit you picked up from other radio talkers?

Thank you very much for information on this intriguing topic.  

No matter how much I inquire and complain, I get no explanation, no reply at all. And these announcers make many other grammatical errors, which come at the rate of several each minute. Here are some examples (the proper forms for the intended meanings and omitted words are in parentheses):

 The Dow dropping ten points (…dropped ten points); Humpback whales spotted in the waters off Maui (….whales werespotted); A police officer arrested (…officer was arrested); Japanese media reporting (…media reported); The President expected to (…was expected to); Obama says French, U.S. relationship strong (…the French and U.S. relationship isstrong); At least two people killed in fire (…people were killed in a fire); (It) looks like our high-surf warning (is) down to a high-surf advisory; Today (is) your last chance to get involved; Police reporting (reported that) a man (was) arrested; Tuesday concluding (concluded) eight days of testimony; Research shows that (the) Hawksbill turtle (is) rebounding more slowly.... 

I should not have to point out that it makes a big difference whether a cop arrested someone or was arrested, whether the President expected to do something or was expected to do something. Words do matter, more than NPR's Word Matters editors realize.

 No one else talks this way and no one writes this way, not even the announcers themselves. I’m sure that even they don’t talk this way in regular conversations, but do so only on the radio. Why? They refuse to say. What happened to NPR's commitments to excellence and openness? 

These newscasters imagine that they have no obligation to the language that is the lifeblood of their profession and no obligation to explain to their audience why they deliberately mangle that language. This is not just annoying; it is irresponsible and arrogant. As broadcasters they can easily spread infectious, defective memes far and wide, and they have a responsibility to avoid doing this. 

Some say that broadcast pidgin is inspired by cellphone texting in which we save time and money by minimizing the number of words. But broadcast pidgin started spreading years before cellphones were common. Others say that broadcast pidgin is akin to newspaper headline writing and this may be true; perhaps they are speaking in headlinese. However, headlines are written in incomplete sentences for reasons of space; there is a certain logic to it and the grammar goof isn’t repeated over and over throughout the story. 

What’s radio’s excuse? Surely they aren’t so pressed for a few seconds each hour that they have to trim and sacrifice the language itself, like so much unwanted fat. These people do not appreciate the logic and beauty of simple proper English spoken in complete sentences. They don’t realize that their headlinese is unpleasant to listen to, an assault on the auditory cortex.

Hawaii Public Radio announcers, especially Dave Lawrence and his editors (if he has any), need a crash course in basic high-school level English grammar, a subject they somehow missed on their way to college degrees in communications. 

Links to all my blogs: www.KurtButlerBlogs.blogspot.com. 

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