The goofs this time
Iturn my attention this month to a few mistakes that slipped through the fingers of our editors. The editors of the Trust titles are generally meticulous in ensuring near error free newspapers. I always commend them for it. When I first took up the job of the Ombudsman for the newspapers, I often found no errors I needed to point out to the editors and their reporters. I did not feel right about this. Don’t laugh.
But we are all human. Now and then, a mistake manages to slip through the fingers of even the most meticulous editor. And we have the ah-ah moment. Unlike the doctor, an editor cannot bury his mistake. Not when the Ombudsman is an ever invisible presence.
An editor is not always to blame for those mistakes that dodge him and get into his newspaper. The fault is not in him but in the printer’s devil. He has always been a nightmare for proof readers. Not any more in the computer age. The devil should confine himself to misleading the unwary towards eternal damnation. Must he also make an editor drench himself with cold sweat? Haba!
I found the mistakes here under in the May 23 issue of the Daily Trust.
On page four of the newspaper, we found this headline:
An ah-ah moment. The trial is not for the airman. That would suggest NAF is doing the trial on his behalf. He is on trial. The correct word is not for but of. Correct sentence: NAF begins trial of airman…
It is the tradition in newspapers that headlines are cast in the present tense. The sub-editor followed this tradition a little beyond the letter. And he slipped. In the headline under discussion, the last four words are “…who kills his female colleague.” The airman could not have been charged with, let alone tried, for killing his female colleague in the future. The correct headline should be: NAF begins trial of airman who killed his female colleague. Begins indicates an action being taken now for what happened; not for what is to happen. Airman kills his female colleague, is a correct headline English although it happened in the past.
However, there is a legal problem here. The airman is on trial as a suspect. As the headline stands, he is proven guilty. That is not within the province of the editor. Usually in a case like this and to protect themselves from a possible libel writ, in case the court rules in favour of the accused, editors take cover under the word allegedly. It is an ugly word in a sentence. So, the correct headline should be: NAF begins trial of airman over the death of his female colleague.
On the same page, we found this headline: Late Aminu Kano’s wife Shatu dies at 89.
This is a common mistake. A dead man does not have a wife; and a dead wife does not have a husband. When a man dies and leaves his wife behind, she transforms from his wife to his widow; and when a wife dies, her living husband becomes her widower.
Correct headline: Late Aminu Kano’s widow….
On Page 23, we found this headline: NIS nabs 8 year-old twins, 6 others at border crossing for Europe.
The word nabs means arrest; it is colloquial but quite often finds its way into a respectable company. Did NIS really arrest eight-year old twins?And were they trying to cross the border?
They would be super kids to be found trying to cross the border. Those the NIS arrested were the six adults with the children. The first question the reporter should have tried to answer is: were the twins kidnapped? Although the NIS officials believed the men and women they arrested were human traffickers, the reporter failed to tell us if they indeed they were. The story was poorly reported because
An editor is not always to blame for those mistakes that dodge him and get into his newspaper. The fault is not in him but in the printer’s devil. He has always been a nightmare for of a) lack of proper information on the status of the children and b) the reporter failed to connect the dots to aid his readers.
I think the sub-editor attempted to sensationalise the story but he too failed to do a good job of this. I was surprised to see the headline talk of “crossing border for Europe.” Is there such a border anywhere in the country? I don’t think so. Lazy reporting. What we know from the story is that the men and women were arrested with the twins in Katsina trying to cross the border to Niger Republic. They might have intended to take the children to Europe. That was what the immigration officials suspected. But that does not mean that the point at which they were arrested could be described as “border crossing for Europe.” I wonder what stopped the reporter from talking to one or two of the six suspects. I wonder why the reporter made no attempts to humanize the story by telling us something about the twins.
Editors are usually reluctant to look too closely into columns written by experienced journalists or intellectuals. They think their information is always correct and their work is perfect. This is a mistake. Just as no condition is perfect, no columnist, however experienced or learned he might be, is above making mistakes. The editor is the last gatekeeper. The purpose of his manning the gate is to ensure that avoidable errors do not slip through it. A columnist’s mistake sends the rotten eggs homing in on the face of the editor. It is in the professional interest of the editor to assist, where necessary, his columnist to make his column as error free as possible.
We turn to the back page of the same issue of the newspaper where a column by the guest columnist, Muhammad Al-Gazali, was published. Part of paragraph two of the column reads: “Like his soul mate, the Osun State Governor, Ayodele Fayose….”
Notice the error? Well, Fayose is governor of Ekiti State, not of Osun State. The governor of Osun State or rather in the politically correct name of the state in the state, State of Osun, is Rauf Aregbesola. You would probably think this was a minor error. I do not think so. The business of a newspaper is to be a reliable public record. Errors, minor or major, that slip through the gatekeeper insults the integrity of a newspaper. Readers do not easily forget or forgive avoidable mistakes.