Use of slang or cliches in interviews

A listener of the BBC wondered if the non-native English-speaking interviewees really understand what is being asked of them.

The most recent incident I heard, which has prompted me to write, was on when one of your female interviewers asked an Italian news journalist about Berlusconi’s impending court appearance. She asked the Italian if he thought that Berlusconi would plead innocent and, if so, ‘would he be able to pull it off’.

The poor Italian hadn’t a clue about what she meant and I shudder to think what literal translation may have been flashing through his mind.

This got me wondering: How about all the immigrants in the United States who have English as a second language. How do they react to slang or clichés? Is there a better way for reporters to do their jobs in these types of situations?

Obviously one way around this for the reporter is to have a large vocabulary. If a person being interviewed does not appear to know what the reporter has said, it does no good to repeat the same words.

Another way is for the reporter to learn another language.

Journalism in Zimbabwe — BBC Over to You 4/18

The Beeb has a great program — Over to You — that is about the state of media around the world.

This weekend they had a story about the changes in Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe there is only state-run broadcasting. This year the government created the Zimbabwe Media Commission with the declared intention to promote and protect the media.

The guest this week was Gerry Jackson, a Zimbabwe exile who runs a radio station aimed at Zimbabwe from England, says the only difference between the policies of the Mugabe government before and after the unity government came to power and the new media commission is that the overt violence against free media has subsided.

Private news outlets are still banned. It is still against the law to call the 86-year-old Mugabe “an old man.”

Other discussions included the use of labels such as “left wing” and “right wing” to groups.

This is a good radio program that is available live and on podcasts from the BBC web site.

BBC series on the Internet and what it means

The Beeb as a great series on its web site called Superpower: Exploring the extraordinary power of the Internet.

Lots of interesting stories about how the Internet can and does affect society.

For example, Jiyar Gol looked at how Iraqis are using the Internet to rebuild their country and heal ethnic and religious wounds. (And by the way, I have not yet seen a similar story from any of the US media outlets.)

Another is on Afghan bloggers.

But the stuff with a really great “geek factor” are the interactive sites.

• Top 100 Web Sites in the World
• Web Rich List
• The growth of Internet use in the past 10 years

And for those who need a tutorial on how the Internet works, there is this. The cool part about this link are the counters of how many people are using the Internet that day, how many e-mails have been sent, how many Google searches and how many blog postings occurred.

Looking at the use of the Internet to get news is also interesting.

The chart represents the number and percentage of users accessing those sites based on the Nielson company monitoring system.

For example, 92.9 million people were using Fox Interactive (different from Fox News) at the time I lifted this chart, represent 1.96% of the Internet users. (Fox News drew 18 million or 0.38%.)

CNN drew 44.4 million for 0.94%, BBC had 35 million for 0.74% of online users, and the New York Times and Globo of Brazil each drew 0.49% of Internet users.

BTW, ESPN drew 26.6 million people for 0.56% of those using the Internet.

Anyway, the BBC series shows the influence and power of the Internet. It is an interesting section to visit at the BBC site. And it is too bad that only places like WIRED tend to do these kinds of stories in an ongoing basis in the American media landscape.