Journalese
By
N. RAGHUNATHAN. M.A., B.L.
(Assistant
Editor, The Hindu)
To
speak when you have something to say, and to practise the golden virtue of
silence the rest of the time, is a luxury which few journeymen, (as
distinguished from gentlemen) journalists can afford. It is chronic
over-writing that is responsible for most of the stylistic aberrations that go
by the comprehensive name of journalese. The word was first used as late as
1882. But the thing itself is far older. Writing to a friend in 1809 Crabb
Robinson, the famous diarist, observed of a successful fellow-journalist, “My
colleague has a certain wordy emphasis which readers like.” And what the reader
likes or is supposed to like is as much the ruling consideration with popular
journalism today as it has ever been–and with far more disastrous results. In
its early days the press looked for support to a limited but comparatively
intelligent and educated public. Its literary standards were correspondingly
higher. The characteristic vices of the old-time journalist were an excess of
exuberance indicative of abundant vitality and an extreme license of speech
that the manners of the age permitted. It is anemia and a smothering
respectability that afflict his modern descendant. “Newspaper writing,” said
Thomas Barnes, the first great Editor of The Times, “is a thing sui
generis. It is in literature what brandy is in beverages. John Bull whose
understanding is rather sluggish–I speak of the majority of readers–requires a
strong stimulus;…you must fire ten-pounders at his densely compacted intellect
before you can make it comprehend your meaning or care one farthing for your
efforts.” As a sample of Barnes’ ten-pounders this shot at
Lord Brougham will serve: “Persons acquainted with the furniture of Lord Brougham’s
mind,” said The Times, “know that it is like the
specimens of an upholsterer’s show-room–some piece of every set, but nothing in
completeness and arrangement–a lumber of fineries, odds and ends, at once more
and less than necessary to the fitting of anyone mansion of the understanding.”
Surely to be abused in that royal style is itself distinction! For Barnes’
brandy, unfortunately, we have now substituted slops; universal primary
education and a cheap press have seen to that.
Use
and wont has dulled many a good word which, in the morning-time of the
language, glittered and rang true. The great artist is at liberty to discard
this defaced coinage and mint his own currency. But the honest hodman of
journalism, even if he happens to have a feeling for words, is made to realise
early that he must not deviate from the familiar or cultivate an individual
idiom. The public will not have it, he is told. The utmost he may
venture in this direction is to mother
fancy words that somebody else has spawned–words
like ‘quisling’, ‘fifth column’ and ‘global’ will readily
occur to my listeners. And it must be admitted that
the Workaday journalist has little inclination
to go a-maying in the woods of fine prose. Perpetually racing
against the clock, he cannot pick his words nicely even if he
would. He must slam them down as they Come higgled-Piggledy, trusting to
instinct and practice to save him from the more egregious types of howler.
Carelessness can and should be avoided. But it is not always possible to verify
your quotations, even if you must not take chances with your spelling. The
rotary press, by grudging you that extra five minutes, seems
to make mock of your quest of perfection. And a miss is as
good as a mile.
Hurry
is particularly inimical to economy of expression. It
is paradoxical but true that it
is far more difficult to say a thing in fifteen
words than in fifty. To distil the essence
of a situation in a few significant and well-ordered
words is expert’s work: to turn on the tap of
muddled prose is child’s play. Where time is all important and quantity is not
to be despised– for the journalist,
as the Oxford Dictionary reminds you with a spice of academic malice, is a
penny-a-liner as well as other things–all
the predisposing conditions of verbal dropsy are present. But let it not be
supposed that the journalist is congenitally long-winded. Where technical considerations
make compression imperative–as in the matter of headlines–he can be as laconic
as you please. Indeed, the common complaint is that he
too often sacrifices sense to his passion for brevity. The best type of
headline, however, is a miracle of conciseness and point.
While
the high pressure at which the day’s work is done is not a little responsible
for the flatulence and slovenliness of much newspaper writing, its general
formlessness is too often explained by the fact that the writer is struggling
to express an emotion that is not deeply felt. The daily commentator must be
ready at a moment’s notice to turn out a knowledgeable and moderately
interesting paragraph on any subject, however trivial or uninviting in itself,
which accident has brought into the limelight. He may not say with Hamlet:
“What’s
Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her?”
Like the professional
mourners of Egypt and the tame bards at the courts of mediaeval barons, he must
be equally ready to sing a dirge or a ditty as the occasion may prompt. The
temptation in such straits to indulge in superficialities and window-dressing,
hollow sentiment and sickening blague should be obvious. A few
illustrations taken at random from a recent batch of British and American
newspapers will perhaps be useful here. “Do those who
go forth in autumn,” runs a peroration on the glory of science in achieving a
thornless blackberry, “with baskets and crooked sticks, to raid those
hedgerows, know of chromosomes and the part they play in the spreading tangles
of the wild blackberry?” And why should they, the exasperated reader is tempted
to ask the panegyrist in return. A ‘middle’ writer in a famous American
newspaper grows lyrical over ice in Christmas which puts him in mind of the
timeless verities. “Armies march and dictators rant, and ice on a river turns
the flow of a battle. And long after the dictators have been laid in the
frost-heaved earth, a wisp of cloud and crystal of ice will be moving the
granite mountains.” The thought would be chastening– if it were not so trite.
Again, how could you possibly hope to stir up indignation against the
Government’s unpreparedness for the future if you set about it as decorously as
does an English journal which begins its tirade by saying, “It is difficult not
to be very impatient and very angry”? The professional, hard-boiled as he is,
fine it, however, far pleasanter to throw bouquets than to heave brickbats, as
you will see from the following prize-piece in which a paragraphist in a staid
English weekly gushes all over Mr. Churchill convalescing after his recent
illness:
“The
fact is we can no longer believe anything can happen to the Prime Minister. A
blind fatalism it may be, but at the same time rather more than that. It is not
simply that because the mind cannot conceive the scheme of things without Mr.
Chllrchill, the mind determines that the scheme of things will not be without
Mr. Churchill, but rather that we have acquired a deep conviction that there is
something in the man himself that will keep him at his post, fit and able, till
(in his own words) he has finished the job….What is pneumonia? Moran and M.
& B. 693 see to that. A few days in bed no doubt; but one can read
despatches and write them, too, as well there as anywhere else.”
It
would be difficult to assemble in briefer compass all the characteristic vices
of journalese. Here you have the painful archness, the pedantic circumlocution,
the distressing emptiness and the seeming profundity on which Fowler’s flail
descends so unmercifully. Surely there are other and more convincing ways of
expressing one’s admiration for a great national leader.
So
far I have been discussing avoidable faults. More important, though not so
obvious, are certain difficulties inherent in the given situation. The special
genius of prose, maintained Clutton-Brock, is persuasion. If the art is to be
successfully practised the writer must have a definite view-point and he must
know for whom he is writing. The problem of visualising the reader is, of
course, not one that is peculiar to the newspaper writer; but it exists for him
in an exceptional degree. Newspapers are run for the benefit of the average
man–that nightmare of all scrupulous artists. He is as much a figment of the
imagination as the economic man and as difficult f to ignore or get away from.
Every waking hour of his life the newspaperman is engaged in divining the
tastes, the wishes and even the prejudices of this mysterious entity which he
must satisfy or perish, The task has been made easier in a measure by two
developments. Every intellectual stratum–the high brow, the low brow, the
mezzo-brow–has its own favourite newspapers to which it presents a more or less
homogeneous objective. And every newspaper, again, sets out to cater for a
multiplicity of tastes; film-fans and sports-addicts are not neglected by
newspapers whose appeal is primarily to serious students of current affairs,
though they may not be regaled with the special jargon of the cult. But even
after all this specialisation, the core of the problem remains. The writer must
aim at a target which he but imperfectly sees.
The
other difficulty is fundamental. The novelist, essayist or other creative
writer is concerned to communicate only what he–the unique
individual–authentically sees and feels. The editorial writer is in a very
different plight. I am, of course, assuming reasonable honesty on his part. Not
all scribblers, however hardened, have the courage and the engaging freedom
from convictions of any kind displayed by the hero of C. E. Montague’s A
Hind Let Loose, who, you will remember, impartially and anonymously
supplied leading articles to the rival newspapers in the town in which both the
Editors were made to baste each other with a will!
Even
in the rare cases where he is crusader for a cause, with absolute and undivided
control over policy, there are forced upon the working journalist in the daily
commerce of political life compromises of one sort or other. A hundred
considerations–ranging from diplomatic prudence to wholesome fear of the law of
libel–conspire to muffle his thunders. As to the average newspaper, it
expresses not so much a personal as a collective view-point. It may be either
that of the party which it supports if it is a party organ, or, if it is
independent, its policy will be the product of discussion and compromise
between the key-men on it who are broadly in sympathy with one another in their
aims. In either case the expression of editorial opinion necessarily bears the
marks of its evolution. An impersonal, almost colourless, style is the natural
vehicle of this collective mind.
But
I should not like you to go away with the impression that the commentator on
the passing show is condemned by the nature of his calling to the writing of
drab uninviting prose. As good English, by and large, appears in the newspapers
as is to be found in the less hurried and more personal writing that passes for
current literature. After all, a very considerable body of great prose that has
come down from the past was written as taskwork by working
journalists. If the central notion of democracy–that an appeal to men in the
mass can succeed if it is directed to their reason–is correct, a newspaper that
reflects a point of view–even if that point of view is itself a composite
product–and succeeds in persuading large numbers to accept it, must speak an
idiom that has a characteristic and recognisable quality. And that is as good a
definition of style as we can ever hope to achieve. The language of persuasion
may be direct without being personal, compact without being obscure,
argumentative, analytical and relying for its effect not on extraneous ornament
but on the compulsive power of a broad humanity which never loses sight of the
common man. Queen Victoria complained that Gladstone addressed her like a
public meeting. The successful newspaper writer reverses the process; though
addressing all the world he makes Tom, Dick and Harry feel that he is speaking
to them as man to man.*
* By
courtesy of the All India Radio.