media – Page 5 – don't confuse the narrator

dust up

There’s nothing funny about a story of Turkish workers dying from silicosis after working in factories where sand is used to pre-age jeans. Nor is there anything funny about the Night Stalker who allegedly attacked 108 old people in the Croydon area over a period of 17 years.

Sadly, the juxtaposition of two reports in a newspaper can add an inappropriately humorous twist. Which is what happened in Sunday’s El Mundo, Crónica section, where, in the printed edition, the two stories occupied full pages opposite each other:

"El Mundo" double page spread, 22 November 2009

It’s not the double page spread that’s the problem, it’s the photo captions:
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alien affairs

In today’s El Mundo there’s a report entitled Los borrosos rostros de la nueva Unión – “the vague faces of the new Union”. (It’s in the print edition, but it seems you need a subscription to read the article online.) In it, they talk about the new president of the European Union and the “superministra”, Catherine Ashton.

Oops. I nearly typed Catherine Tate.

There are two possible reasons for that slip, I think: one, going back to the Eighties when I first learned about databases with dBase II, an Ashton-Tate product; and two, the fact that the article is accompanied by a photo of a dalek.
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pedantry

I should probably start this post by saying that I know my grammar and punctuation aren’t perfect. However, I’m not usually writing about politically and emotionally delicate matters; and I’m not writing on an international news site which is read by millions worldwide.

It bothers me when I see phrases like this on the BBC website:

“I absolutely condemn sexual tourism [and] I condemn paedophilia in which I have never in any way participated, and all the people who accuse me of that type of thing should be ashamed,” Mr Mitterrand said.

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veranos de la villa

Reading the list of concerts planned for Madrid’s Veranos de la Villa (Summer in the City) celebrations this year is like stepping back in time.

I’m not that surprised by names like Burt Bacharach and Jerry Lee Lewis: I sort of expect those guys to go on for ever. But George Benson, Kool and the Gang, Jeff Beck, James Taylor…

In August, I’ll be attending the Writers’ Summer School in Swanwick. There’s a ‘Retro Revival’ disco planned for the Tuesday night, and I’m pretty sure the music will overlap with what’s on in Madrid this summer.

Incidentally, for the Spanish readers among you, this ‘noticia’ about the Veranos logo might be amusing. (If your Spanish isn’t quite up to scratch, remember: don’t believe everything you read on the web.)

crooked houses

Potentially good news for all those Brits in Spain who are living in houses that were built without proper licences. The Reader (Almería-based English-language paper) tells us: Mayor of Zurgena and 24 more charged in urban corruption case.

An interesting language point from the story is the word prevaricación which although clearly connected to the English “prevarication” is not a direct translation.
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