When Police Say

"Attribution! Attribution! Attribution!" The words of Prof. Phil Bremen have rung in the ears of his Ball State University students for years. If your news story is based upon information from a source -- named or unnamed -- you must attribute the information to that source.

This may explain why you'll often hear a newscaster say something like, "A man is jailed after police say..."

Wait. A man was jailed because a policeman spoke?

"Well," a consultant might argue, "that's better than, 'According to police.' That's old-fashioned newspaper speak, and we don't want to sound old-fashioned ..."

Uh-huh.

Listeners (and viewers) don't have the benefit of seeing the puncuation in the script. Maybe the guy/gal wrote, "A man is jailed after, police say, ..." I'm willing to give 100:1 odds that s/he did not include the offsetting commas in the script because (1) s/he grew up hearing "..after police say" and assumed that it was correct because radio and TV newscasters are supposed to be expert grammarians and set an example, or (2) because s/he didn't comprehend the ambiguity, or (3) was never taught the difference.

Sometimes, newscasters will use voice inflection to infer puncutation -- e.g., dropping the pitch of his/her voice at the end of a sentence to indicate a period, or inserting a slight pause before and after reading a direct quote.

So I guess that, to avoid unwarranted arrest, we should all try not to be around when police say.