Overuse and misuse of the verb “to see” are spreading like a pandemic through much of the U.S. and British media. The habit is more than just ugly and unnecessary; it betrays a sloppiness of thinking that is dangerous among journalists, who should be masters of succinct and clear expression.

How often do U.S. broadcast reports begin with a phrase like: “Yesterday saw the most violence in Afghanistan that we have seen so far this year.”? Translation: “Yesterday was the most violent day in Afghanistan so far this year.”

The following gem was delivered by a Fox News business reporter in mid-October: “The figures we’ll see for manufacturing production are unlikely to be as strong as we were expecting to see. We’ll have to see what we see there.”

Translation: “Figures for manufacturing production are likely to be weaker than expected.”

The ubiquitous phrase, “We’ll have to see what happens,” and its variants should be banned from American TV and radio. As long as we survive with our senses intact, we have no choice but to see what happens, and this irritating cliché adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge.

The misuse of “see” is not just bad style; its imprecision can obscure the meaning of a sentence. The Economist recently wrote of “the frenzied economic growth that saw the state’s [Nevada’s] population double between 1990 and 2007,” leaving it unclear whether the economic growth caused the population growth or vice versa – or whether the two just happened at the same time.

The writer probably meant that the frenzied pace of economic growth drew a lot more people to Nevada, as the word “saw” often seems to be used to suggest an underlying causal connection. Thus a correspondent for The Daily Telegraph of London recently wrote:

The economic crisis saw the authority of Brussels seriously weakened as governments took unilateral action to save their countries’ banks, car companies and jobs.

This presumably means: “The economic crisis seriously weakened the authority of Brussels as governments…” although it could mean just that the weakening coincided with the economic crisis.

“See” and “saw,” particularly when followed by a passive verb, as above, often generate long-winded vagueness instead of clarity and precision. Describing climate change negotiations in October, the Financial Times reported:

Instead of demanding the transfer of intellectual property, developing countries are now willing to discuss collaborating on the development of low-carbon technologies. Such a scenario would see rich world companies encouraged to co-develop new technology with developing country partners.

Apart from the absurdity of a scenario “seeing” anything, the second sentence contains no information that is not in the first sentence, other than that rich-world companies would be encouraged to join in the process. This could be conveyed by adding “…with rich-world companies encouraged to participate” to the first sentence, cutting the verbiage from 17 words to seven. But the main problem is that that the writer’s formulation – “see” followed by the passive verb – avoids any explanation of who or what would encourage the companies to participate.

Financial Times writers are frequent offenders in perpetrating this imprecise, ungainly, and usually unnecessary usage. A recent front-page story reported that: “The U.S. has seen job shedding at a rate not seen elsewhere…”

Why not: “The U.S. has shed jobs faster than elsewhere”?

Although, of course, the sentence could mean: “The U.S. has shed jobs more slowly than elsewhere.”

All too often the verb is inserted in an automaton-like way when it is totally unnecessary, as in: “Unemployment is higher than the levels seen last year,” which just means that unemployment is higher than last year.

Likewise, a BBC report said that:

The memorandum of understanding on Scots Gaelic is similar to one signed for Welsh last July. However, the move does not see it added to the EU’s list of “official” languages.

Normal English for the second sentence: “Scots Gaelic will not, however, become an official EU language.”

The Washington Post recently contained a headline: House districts that could see 2010 party switch, which should anyway be “switches” as House districts are plural. Much better would be: House districts where parties may switch in 2010.

Reporting on GM’s proposed sale of its German subsidiary Opel, the Associated Press inelegantly referred to “…Magna’s original plan, part of the bid it made in July, which saw cuts including of up to 2,045 at the plant in Bochum…” Plain English: “which included cuts of up to 2,045 at the plant in Bochum…”

Where many writers go wrong is in making some event or abstract concept the subject of the verb “to see.” Thus, the Monday Media section of The Guardian recently contained the phrase: “…a station rebrand – along with the rest of the BBC’s national networks – that saw the Radio 2 logo turn… ginger.” Another story from The Guardian referred to “…the global commodity boom, which saw his company’s profits and shares rocket,” and the Financial Times said “the peaceful revolution of 1989 saw much of eastern Europe embrace the market.” Surely, much of Eastern Europe embraced the market after the peaceful revolution, a development that was not actually witnessed by the revolution itself. In any case, how can a move, a rebrand, a commodity boom or a peaceful revolution see anything?

Is it too much to ask writers to adopt a simple rule of thumb: Apply the verb “to see” only to creatures with eyes? Unfortunately, it probably is.

Germany should overcome its Puritan ethic and wean its economy off a “destructive addiction” to industrial exports – in the interests both of Germany itself and of the rest of the world - writes Reginald Dale of the CSIS Transatlantic Media Network in the September issue of the magazine Industry Today. But while this is by far the biggest economic and political challenge facing the country, it has hardly featured in the campaign for national elections on September 27, nor is it likely to be grasped firmly by any new government that may emerge in the weeks ahead.

On the contrary, Angela Merkel, who is expected to continue as Chancellor at the head of a coalition after the elections, has specifically pledged to return Germany to its traditional export-dependent approach after the effects of the global financial crisis wear off. She has made it clear that temporary stimulus and job-boosting measures are meant simply to tide the economy over until its export dominance can resume – neglecting the argument that countries like China and Germany will have to reduce their huge trade surpluses if the global imbalances underlying the crisis are to be resolved, and the corresponding U.S. deficit reduced. The diversion of Germany’s output from the domestic market to exports – mainly of cars, machinery, consumer durables and chemicals - is also holding back the living standards of the country’s people.

One of the factors behind German thriftiness is a Puritan streak that favors hard work and the production of goods over purportedly frivolous spending on services and financial speculation. And while Germany is quick to blame the alleged excesses of “Anglo-Saxon” capitalism for the global crisis, it is less good at examining its own contribution through persistent current account surpluses, which, by definition, not everyone else can match. The answer is for Germany to boost its domestic demand and allow the share of services in the economy to grow closer to that in other advanced countries.

Critics are slamming the fake, provocatively sexy, video sneaked onto YouTube by the Danish state tourist board, VisitDenmark, in an underhand manner earlier this month. But the controversial marketing ploy is seen by its sponsors as a huge success.

The video shows a young blonde Danish woman, “Karen,” with her baby, “August,” saying she wants to let the anonymous father know that he has a child in Denmark – the fruit of a single, casual encounter. “Karen” says she doesn’t even know the father’s name or country of origin, but she doesn’t “blame” him. It turns out, however, that the “mother” is in fact actress Ditte Arnth Jorgensen, who has launched a similar stunt video before, that “August” is not her baby, and that the video was produced by the Grey Group international advertising agency.

When Danish media revealed that the tourist board was behind the video, it was assailed for trying to sell the country by suggesting that willing young blondes were readily available. Similar disapproval was voiced by the media in Britain and other European countries, and even by some in the United States. Passport, the blog of the U.S. Foreign Policy magazine, described the video as “the worst tourist advertisement ever produced.” Others wondered exactly what clientele the tourist board was targeting – certainly not women, seniors, couples, or families.

With the outcry mounting, the tourist board announced that it had removed the video from YouTube – assuming such a thing to be possible after a video has gone viral – but not before it had already scored more than 800,000 hits. A Grey advertising representative hailed the video as “the most successful viral advertising ever,” saying it had “cut through the media clutter” – all for the same cost as a 30-second commercial aired a few times on Danish TV.

Dorte Kiilerich of VisitDenmark described the video as the “most effective thing we have ever done to market Denmark,” claiming that it shows Denmark as a place where women live in a free society and can make their own choices. “This is a good, sweet and really harmless story and it’s not unusual to sell false stories when you communicate,” Kiilerich said. That sounded laughable to the ad’s critics, especially the notion that it’s OK for government bodies to “sell false stories” – even though few may find that surprising.

The French newspaper Le Monde casts doubts on forecasts that a wave of new "green jobs" is on the way, as claimed by both the French and U.S. governments.

The left-of-center paper queries President Barack Obama’s pre-election pledge that he would rapidly create 5 million "green jobs" in the United States and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent prediction that France would generate 600,000 similar jobs by 2020 through major investments in environmental construction, transportation, and renewable energy.

Sarkozy’s figure was taken from a report hastily put together in June by the Paris branch of Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The Le Monde analyst, Marie-Béatrice Baudet, says some economists find the report unconvincing, because it relies on optimistic forecasts of consumer spending and fails to take account of changes in energy prices.

Promises of a surge in job creation have "a taste of déjà vu," recalling the false hopes raised by the "dot-com" boom ten years ago, and should be treated with caution, Baudet says.

She quotes a warning by Robert Bell of Brooklyn College, City University of New York, that a "green bubble" may be developing as a result of government fiscal incentives for the environmental sector and a rising stock market.

This blog has previously drawn attention to the failure of the American media to verify claims of U.S. world superiority when a little checking would show such pretensions to be untrue, or at least doubtful. Now it is the turn of conservatives opposing Democratic health care reform proposals to benefit from the media’s blind eye, with the exception of a handful of perceptive bloggers.

Among the leaders of the chauvinistic chorus has been Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who stated on NBC’s Meet the Press that "[W]e have the finest health care in the world now.” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) went even further on Fox News Sunday, maintaining that Obama’s health plan "will be the first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known." Many others are making similar claims.

Officials at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, a policy and statistics group for 30 wealthy nations, would not necessarily agree. The latest OECD Health Data, released in July, show the United States lagging many other developed countries in key health measures, even though it is by far the largest spender on health care.

The United States spent $7,290 per capita on health in 2007, much more than any other OECD country and almost two and a half times the OECD average of $2,964, the report says. Nevertheless, the United States has fewer physicians per capita than most other OECD countries, fewer acute care hospital beds than the OECD average, and only slightly more nurses than the average.

Life expectancy in the United States was 78.1 years in 2006, almost a year below the OECD average of 79.0 years, and the U.S. infant mortality rate was significantly above the average. The United States had the second lowest proportion of smokers (after Sweden), but its adult obesity rate of 34.3 percent was the highest, followed by Mexico with 30.0 percent.

International comparisons of health care standards are notoriously tricky, and the World Health Organization gave up trying to rank world health systems in 2000, “because of the complexity of the task.” Its 2000 ranking put the United States in a clearly unrealistic 37th place, below Colombia, Morocco and Costa Rica. But top-placed France and Italy after often thought to deliver better health care than the United States.

It is a pity that the U.S. media do not seem to want to explore the nationalistic fantasies behind the conservative claims – just as they didn’t challenge President Obama’s frequent but false claim earlier this year that American workers are the most productive in the world. The New York Times published an excellent analysis entitled, World’s Best Medical Care?, but that was in August, 2007.

Despite their traditional desire to score points off each other, the British and French are competing for the title of “worst tourists,” following publication of a study of touristic behavior by nationality conducted by the Expedia travel company. The survey of 4,500 hoteliers named the British as the worst tourists in Europe, but the French the worst worldwide.

Rather than focus on the poor showing of France, England’s traditional enemy, much of the British media highlighted their own country’s embarrassing bottom rating in Europe, while the French media returned the compliment by focusing on France’s “worst tourist” rating globally. Both countries seemed perversely proud of winning a booby prize.

Britain’s Press Association headed its story: Britons “Worst-behaved Tourists in Europe”, while the Daily Mail reported: “Travel is supposed to broaden the mind. But for many Britons, going abroad still seems to be an opportunity to prove that no other tourists can be as oafish. It’s an accolade we win easily.” The PA published a league table of the world’s best tourists, showing Japan at the top and the United States sharing eighth place with Sweden.

The BBC, however, went straight for the jugular on the other side of the Channel, starting its report: “French tourists are the worst in the world, coming across as penny-pinching, rude and terrible at languages.”

The French news agency AFP, on the other hand, followed the general trend by ignoring the sorry British performance in Europe and instead castigating French behavior overseas. Under the headline Pushy French are world’s worst tourists, the agency reported from Paris: “Penny-pinching, rude and terrible at foreign languages, French people are the world’s worst tourists.” It added, “Clean and tidy, polite, quiet and uncomplaining, Japanese tourists came top of the crop for the third year running.”

The French daily Le Figaro said it had received a huge number of comments from readers who were not at all surprised that France had won the gold medal for obnoxious tourism. “Fortunately,” wrote one reader, “only 50 percent of French people go on vacation. Otherwise the results would have been even more dramatic.” Many others made a distinction between rude Parisians and less objectionable tourists from other parts of the country.

The British “hated the locals”

Fortuitously perhaps, the Daily Express in London chose the day of the study’s release to review a book chronicling the rise of the package tour, invented by the British after their victory over the French at Waterloo in 1815. Things don’t seem to have changed much since. The review said Britain’s early package tourists “loved scenery and hated the locals, insisting on speaking only English.”

Although G-8 leaders have warned that significant risks remain in the world economy, the U.S. media seem to be paying less attention to the continuing global crisis than their European counterparts. The likely reasons are that Europe is lagging behind the United States on the road to recovery and that Europeans are traditionally more attuned to the outside world than Americans.

In Britain, The Daily Telegraph reports the warning from the G-8 that “the global economy faces ‘significant’ dangers in the coming months and a recovery from recession is still some way off.” But although the article is accompanied by a photograph of President and Mrs. Obama, it makes no mention of the United States, or of Obama. Political correspondent James Kirkup instead focuses on the UK, France, Germany, and Russia.

A piece in Le Figaro delves deeper, providing some economic tips to the American president. Pierre-Yves Dugua said Obama’s reforms “must be a compromise” and include “a radical overhaul of the complex system of supervision of banks … and more marginal changes to rules imposed on financial institutions, so that they can better control their risks.” Dugua thinks President Obama should take the opportunity to conduct a complete overhaul of an outdated system “instead of simplifying the system currently in place.” He goes on to compare Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s idea of a systemic risk board, operating above the Federal Reserve, to similar plans in Europe.

In another article, Le Figaro concludes that “Barack Obama does not want to reinvent capitalism.” It continues, “He could have been much more ambitious in reaction to the gravest financial crisis that America has known since the 1930s.” As mentioned in the article’s title, Obama is, therefore, “a pragmatist.”

“Dragons on all sides”

In The Irish Times, commentator Tony Kinsella describes in concrete terms the threat to European countries and companies posed by the global recession. The United States, lacking an operational social safety net, has borrowed to fund domestic economic stimulus, Kinsella pointed out, whereas European governments are all borrowing massively to maintain public employment and social benefits. He concludes, as the piece’s headline suggests, that Europeans face unprecedented choices in uncharted waters, “with dragons aplenty on all sides.”

The British and international agency Reuters illustrates how Obama’s reform plans may be contributing to his decline in popularity: “He remains personally popular, but President Barack Obama is starting to see signs that some of his economic policies are causing doubts among many Americans.”

“The end of the recession will merely be the start of a long, painful journey,” says Edmund Conway, The Daily Telegraph’s economics editor. “Every week, it seems, has brought new economic indicators, good or bad. Indeed, the whole thing has recently descended into farce…” Conway concedes that “from a technical point of view, we are close to the end of the recession, in that economic growth is probably stagnating rather than shrinking.” But he concludes on an acerbic note. “There will be no return to the boom years: the recovery will instead take the form of a long convalescence, one that has barely even begun.”

From the American point of view, however, the Financial Times reported July 14 that Treasury Secretary Time Geithner believes U.S. and global recovery may be at hand, and that there is no need at present for fresh fiscal stimulus. “There is a very good chance for seeing the U.S. economy and the world economy get back to the point when it is growing again over the next few quarters,” Geithner said at the start of a tour of European and Gulf capitals.

EU “less than sum of parts”

Nor was Europe completely forgotten by The New York Times, which published a piece by Steven Erlanger in Berlin, Economy Shows Cracks in European Union, which argues that the EU is still “less than the sum of its parts.” Erlanger reports that European leaders have been feuding about broad issues such as how to combat the economic downturn as well as about specific points such as how much money to dedicate to stimulus programs. The article cites tensions in Europe between France and Germany, as well as between north and south, and east and west.

Comparing the impact of the recession on either side of the Atlantic, Erlanger says that Europe “is arguably suffering more” from the subprime mortgage crisis and that “the International Monetary Fund estimates that European banks hold more bad assets than American ones and have written down much less… With the response hobbled by a fractious European Union, many economists now expect the downturn to last longer here than across the Atlantic.”

Newspapers in both the United States and Europe are considering seeking public support as their print editions struggle with plummeting revenues, rising costs and declining circulations. Closures and lay-offs have gone much farther in the United States than in Europe. But European journalists, aware that it may be their turn next, are sounding the alarm before the tidal wave that is washing away U.S. jobs and newspapers rolls across the Atlantic.

On March 25 the EU Observer reported European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) appealed to leaders of the European Parliament to include ‘journalism survival’ in their campaigns for EU-wide European Parliamentary elections due in June. In their letter to the Parliament’s members, EFJ President Arne Koenig and General Secretary Aidan White write:

‘The debate must not focus only on communications policy or technical issues arising from the technological convergence of telephony, broadcasting, print and digital media. These are important, but the critical and historical challenge is to confront the future role of media in contributing to democracy, pluralism and public engagement in the political life of Europe.’

The EFJ specifically wants to meet leaders of pan-European parties to debate the future of journalism, the ways that media pluralism can be ensured and to try to ensure that the future of the media is included in new European Commission programs. The EFJ wants to draw attention to the issue now, rather than after financial strains have reduced the number and variety of European newspapers.

The European media face some different challenges from their American counter parts, not least because of substantial government funding for public television and radio. As ‘new media’ outlets expand, public broadcasters are putting their content in web-based portals that compete with private media for advertising. The BBC, for instance, which is largely financed by compulsory user fees in its domestic UK market, publishes competitive news online with paid advertising. Groups such as the EFJ and the European Publishers Council are concerned that commercial operators throughout Europe will be unable to compete for advertising revenues with heavily subsidized public broadcasters.

A recent report ‘European Newspapers Find Creative Ways to Thrive in the Internet Age’ in the New York Times describes a slightly less dire situation than the EFJ suggest. In fact, it reports that German Publisher, Axel Springer, which owns the biggest-selling newspaper in Europe, the daily Bild, has reported the highest profit in its 62-year history. The article says that European newspapers rely more on reader revenue than fickle advertising revenue and have been able to keep afloat by raising cover prices.

European companies have also been finding creative ways to thrive in a changing media environment. Norway’s VG Nett, which is affiliated with the popular Norwegian tabloid, Verdens Gang, rivals Google in Norway and has a profit margin of nearly 30 percent. It does this through charging for services such as a $90-a-year weight-loss club, a pay-for-upgrade social networking site and streaming soccer games. Newspapers in other European countries, such as Denmark and Belgium, have in various ways resisted the entry of Google News into their markets. In France some papers are kept alive by public subsidies. In the ultra competitive British market, the New York Times reports that local newspapers are disappearing at an alarming rate and that even the national papers are struggling to maintain and increase revenues.

In the United States, Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) recently introduced a Newspaper Revitalization Act that would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, to help avert “a real tragedy.” As quoted in a Reuters report published in the Washington Post, he says:

‘We are losing our newspaper industry…The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.’

Cardin’s bill, aimed at preserving local and community newspapers, has yet to attract any co-sponsors, but has aroused plenty of interest in the media. The proposal would offer newspapers similar status to public broadcasting companies. They would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns, but they would be barred from making political endorsements. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.

In recent months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle have ceased daily publication or announced that they may have to stop publishing. In December the Tribune Company, which owns a number of newspapers including The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy protection.

Two newspaper chains, Gannett Co Inc and Advance Publications, announced employee furloughs in March - the second this year at Gannett – and the Christian Science Monitor is shifting to an online publication with one print edition per week. Further shrinkages around the country were reported in an AP dispatch published in the Washington Post: in Michigan, the Ann Arbor News is to shift to an online only format, while the Flint Journal, the Bay City Times and the Saginaw News will appear only three days a week. The Lexington Herald-Leader (KY) and The Charlotte Observer (NC) will together lay off 130 employees, a small portion of the 1,600 their owner McClatchy Co. plans to shed.

The following useful web page offers brief summaries of European media policies and finances, and major news outlets, on a country-by-country basis.

Congratulatory emails have been pouring in to the Italian Embassy in Washington after Ambassador Giovanni Castellaneta wrote to the Washington Post to protest against a front page report from Rome March 1 headlined ‘As Italy’s Banks Tighten Lending, Desperate Firms Call on the Mafia.’ The emails are from Italian Americans sick and tired of what they see as media stereotyping that persistently exaggerates the involvement of Italians in Mafia activities.

The lengthy article described alarming stories of small businesses turning to dangerous, aggressive Mafioso loan sharks after they were unable to obtain financing from regular banks. The Ambassador’s letter, published March 9, criticized the piece for ignoring Italy’s attempts to fight loan sharks and the strength of the country’s banking system. He noted that Italy had not fallen victim to any subprime crisis, artificial real estate booms or Ponzi schemes such as the massive swindle perpetrated in the United States by Bernard Madoff. He wrote:

‘I have no comments about the article’s one-sided content, the description of a despicable and tragic phenomenon. I wonder, however, if your readers would not have also benefited from just a word about Italy’s commitment or success in fighting it? What idea would my countrymen have of America if they read an article on the Bush administration that interviewed only activist Noam Chomsky or a piece on climate change that cited only Rush Limbaugh?’

Could it be that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown borrowed a speech-writer from his French counterpart President Nicolas Sarkozy for the stirring address he delivered March 4 to the joint houses of Congress in Washington D.C.? Brown’s speech was unusually emotional for the strait-laced Scot. Just like Sarkozy, who spoke from the same podium on November 7, 2007, Brown started with a richly-deserved tribute to all the American soldiers who have fallen fighting for freedom.

In 2007, one of Sarkozy’s biggest applause lines went like this:

I want to express the deep, sincere gratitude of the French people. I want to tell you that whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France. I think of them and I am sad, as one is sad to lose a member of one’s family.

Brown’s 2009 version:

Almost every family in Britain has a tie that binds them to America. So I want you to know that whenever a young American soldier or marine, sailor or airman is killed in conflict anywhere in the world, we, the people of Britain, grieve with you. Know that your loss is our loss, your families’ sorrow is our families’ sorrow . . .

It’s fine sentiment, but maybe it needs to be reworked by the next European leader to step up to the Congressional lectern. Some people actually remember these exaggerated oratorical flourishes.