Read the subtext

I`ve discovered a shocking thing. At last count, I`ve taken swipes on three separate occasions at one or another or all PRs.

The novelty wears off. So I decided to devote this Dot Column to trashing journalists instead - specifically what they`re REALLY saying when they want to make you think they`re reporting honestly, unflinchingly and neutrally.

Hopefully this will sensitise you to the trickery of journalists, for when next you pick your way through your favourite publication. Almost every journalist has a few tricks up his or her sleeve to help out on a rainy day, when inspiration lacks, laziness sets in or prejudice takes hold. Only the strong ones resist the temptation. And if readers don`t develop a healthy scepticism of newspapers as an offering, they`ll get taken in time and again.

I feel like naming somebody. Where`s the fun, otherwise?

Carel Alberts, special editions editor, Brainstorm

What got me started on journalists was last night`s SABC 3 news. One TV reporter, whose name I conveniently forget, because what I say is probably damaging to her ego, always starts her reports in the following way: "Clouds and mountains - a majestic backdrop to Hermanus` OTHER source of natural beauty - the ocean." All in the most atrocious accent imaginable, with no variation to this recipe of incongruous juxtaposition. And much dramatic effect.

Once you think about this sorry example, you`ll realise that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, she was told about "thinking outside the box". And now she always thinks outside the box, in exactly the same way.

I shall now attempt to put into words the horrible infatuation of South African TV journalists with the sing-song reporting of BBC, Sky and CNN journalists.

Instead of musically "toning down" at the end of a sentence, or even up, as news readers have tended to do in the last few years (and Australians and South Africans in London still do), reporters now do a whiny, extended last syllable. I know I`m ranting, but just listen next time. It`ll drive you nuts.

And it`s all very comical when they get it horribly wrong. If you read between the lines, you`ll see what the brittle, rising media personality is ACTUALLY betraying - that they`re painfully insecure about their own abilities and local precepts of elocution.

Another journalistic trick that always irritates me is the one where a virtual nobody is cast as the central character in an article, somebody apparently so representative of what the writer is trying to say that they couldn`t find another, more credible spokesperson to illustrate their point.

For instance: "Jan Klaasen hasn`t been inside a bank for three years."

My point is not that Jan was invented (but he could have been, like Linda who saved R25 000 on her bond), but that his existence or otherwise is totally immaterial. It is just bad journalism.

And if that impressed you as a delightfully resourceful way to personalise an otherwise excruciatingly dull article, I want to disabuse you of that idea. It`s usually when you haven`t interviewed anyone important or close enough to the topic that you need to pull this sort of stunt.

I furthermore detest the cop-out of many journos, the one that invokes "sources close to the deal". Firstly, you can be damn sure "sources" means "source", and the journalist has based an entire article, which damns a whole industry or company or life to hell, on one source who doesn`t have the guts to come out and say his piece in public.

You can also be forgiven for thinking that said source is probably a lot closer to the action than you think. And if you read a bit further, you will often find the same "source", now saying something quite innocuous, quoted, in the same article, by his real name. And only the journalist thinks nobody else can see what he`s doing.

I feel like naming somebody. Where`s the fun, otherwise? But for this next one I`ll refrain: I especially hate the kind of local tech report where the byline reads something like the following: By Kobie Pretorius and Chuck Goldstein, and the story quotes everyone from Steve Jobs to Doug Woolley of Midrand-based Workgroup.

If this stuns and impresses you, just know that you`ve been had. The magazine you`re reading probably has a syndication agreement with some overseas title that allows it to put 40% overseas content in its underpaid, understaffed Randburg-originated trade paper.

My last category of journalistic ploys either belongs under Elementary Errors 101 or Cynical Old-Timers for extra credit 442: when a report uses padding, only by reading the whole article will you know whether you`re dealing with a novice or an old hand.

For instance: "First and foremost". Either the poor sod who wrote it honestly thinks these are meaningful words, or he`s getting paid by the word.