Obscure Box

Now there’s a twist in this story of the Russian tabloid and the Putin story – it seems the newspaper the subject of my ranting “More made up newspapers”, may itself no longer exist. The Russian Interfax agency is carrying a report saying “Moskovsky Korrespondent newspaper publication suspended”. MOSCOW. April 18 (Interfax) – The publication [...]

Channel 10′s early evening news today committed one of the cardinal sins of broadcast journalism. A reporter in the US ended his report with that horrendous expression “it remains to be seen”. The oft-heard phrase usually means the reporter has no idea what to say next, or how to end the report. No idea what [...]

Only the other day I wrote about how annoying it was reading and hearing “Made up newspaper” names. Today I read with shock and awe that someone has now made a national newspaper out of a regional one. “Britain’s Evening Standard newspaper reported that…” goes the story on several news websites on Russia’s outgoing President [...]

It’s not “tweny” it’s “twenty”, same with “thirty” and “forty”. Yet time and again you hear on radio and television reporters dropping their “t”s, especially when delivering weather temperatures. There was a similar problem when Peter Beattie was Premier of Queensland. Too often broadcast journalists would refer to “Peder Beaddie”. It might take a fraction [...]

Scientists have worked out how they think Neanderthals would have spoken more than 30,000 years ago. Apparently they would have sounded like New Zealanders, according to one report “Did Neanderthals speak like New Zealanders?”(Thursday 17 April 2008). The Kiwi website stuff.co.nz makes the tongue-in-cheek claim based on a report in New Scientist, “Neanderthals speak out [...]