Wordy part four

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‘I can’t BELIEVE he said this!’

During 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry the extraordinary (and stupid) comments made by and to members of the emergency services never ceased to amaze him!

 

WHY do they say these things?!

There was, for instance, the senior former police officer who WANTED to say he was restrained when a guilty verdict came through, but got mixed up on television and said he was “sublime”, when he actually meant “subdued”.

Journalists see and hear amazing things

Another one came from a SERVING South Wales Police (SWP) officer, who tried to stymie reporters’ questions yet became confused between ‘insinuate’ and ‘innuendo’ so declared: “Now don’t you be giving me any of your INSINUENDOS”!

Even the day before a murder admission, I was told by a senior SWP officer that others had done it!

I am talking here about the Cardiff Three/Five who were completely innocent of the murder of Lynette White but were hauled in anyway, and their lives have been ruined ever since.

Jeffrey Gafoor murdered Lynette White

A white man (the others were BLACK) called Jeffrey Gafoor admitted years later that HE’D committed the terrible crime, and even apologised (through his barrister) to those who had been wrongly arrested.

Gafoor stabbed Ms White more than 50 times and slit her throat on Valentine’s Day 1988, but was not jailed until 2003.

But the day before he was imprisoned I had been informed by a police officer: “The others did it”.

It goes on today, and it is not just police officers.

A 999 emergency worker had to field the call: “I got my finger stuck in a beer bottle and it will not come out”!

This put me in mind of something I said many years ago during a television Current Affairs programme about waiting times in the health service (nothing changes!).

During a ‘piece-to-camera’ in the back of an ambulance, I announced: “We’re on our way to an emergency where someone has swallowed a bottle top” then more quietly “I can’t say that, it sounds ridiculous…”.

Good reading material…

Perhaps a police officer would have done…

 

The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when words were always used carefully) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.

Tomorrow – he looks at why people are not reading words in newspapers, especially in the one where he started his journalistic career, The South Wales Echo (SWE).