Here’s my letter to the editors of SunStar Cebu, which was published on its 25 February 2008 issue:
IN TWO separate stories in today’s Sun.Star Cebu (Feb. 23), “No loyalty check among GMA allies: PJ”, and “Capitol admits Galing Pook loss”, both written by a certain GMD, quotations attributed to me were mangled, perhaps somewhere in transit from Parklane International Hotel to the Sun.Star printing press.
There must be something about, or along, that route that encourages the mutation of passable, fairly intelligent statements into ungrammatical and downright unintelligible quotes.
Because somehow, CDN and the Freeman managed to preserve my statements with more than a fair degree of accuracy. After all, while I have been known to spew nonsense to reporters from time to time, I always take care to be nonsensical grammatically.
I had to keep my naturally suspicious mind in check as it screamed on and on about sabotage, pointing to the fact that the stories were, themselves, fairly grammatical; only the quotes were skewed (and, I guess, skewered). Plus, of course, there was that other, delicious circumstance that on page 2 of the same issue, I was pontificating about the need to train our teachers in the third district on, among other things, English.
But, no, the sabotage angle is a bit much, if tempting for its comedic value. I guess we just need to ensure that statements are properly recorded and transcribed. Or if we fashion ourselves Old World journalists who carry only a notebook and a pen, then we have to make sure that we separate verbatim quotes from attempted reconstructions of shorthand notes.
And, of course, there’s always good old editing, which never goes out of style.
Thank you. And for the sake of the students and pupils of the underperforming third district schools, it might be helpful to give this some space.
