A News Writing Pet Peeve: Fake Present Tense

Last Updated on September 26, 2022

If you value good grammar, watching some newscasts may seem painful to your ears. One reason for this is the use of fake present tense.

The other day, at the real job, our assistant news director sent an email to producers. In her email, she explained why she might throw a fit the very next time she saw fake present tense in a script.

That may lead you to ask, “What exactly is that?”

I’ll be happy to explain, and I’ll begin with a real-world example.

When the governor of Texas signed an abortion bill into law critics called it among the most restrictive abortion laws passed.

The day after he signed the bill, the TODAY show reported the controversial signing.

I’ll give you two snippets of the report.

Here’s the first:

This morning, Texas taking center stage in the debate over abortion rights passing a law potentially impacting millions of women.

Here’s the second:

Gov. Greg Abbott signing the bill Wednesday, banning abortions in most cases where a fetal heartbeat is detected, potentially as early as six weeks into pregnancy before many women even know they’re pregnant.

Do you notice the problems here?

Fake present tense attempts to make something that happened previously sound as if it’s happening right this second.

In the first example, the reporter said, “Texas taking center stage…” when, in fact, it took center stage the day before.

In the second example, while we see footage of him doing so, the sentence begins, “Gov. Greg Abbott signing the bill Wednesday….” The footage shows him signing the bill. But right in the script that we hear, it says the signing happened the day before.

No, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill.

Just as annoying to me, in both sentences, is the dropping of helping verbs. The first one should read, “Texas is taking center stage” (if you insist on fake present tense there). The second should read, “Gov. Greg Abbot is signing the bill” if you drop Wednesday, which would clearly require a rewrite anyway.

Fake present tense doesn’t fool the audience.

Over the years, I’ve worked with a few anchors who hear a network anchor phrase something a certain way, then proceed to phrase everything in that same manner. I find it maddening.

And lest anyone think I mean to imply NBC News is the sole guilty party when it comes to fake present writing, I happen to hear it most often from ABC News. I tend to like ABC News’ web stories because their writers are generally quite grammatical. But on the air, their anchors drop helping verbs and use fake present tenses for verbs incessantly.

Some news consultants love that, by the way. News consultants are paid to nitpick every detail of station newscasts. Some of their suggestions come from detailed research. Sometimes, they even host focus groups made up of viewers in the actual market.

I can assure you that no viewer ever suggested they would prefer news anchors change the tense of verbs to make it sound like something that happened 24 hours ago is happening just as they turn on the TV.

But unfortunately, anchors and reporters get deluded into thinking, after hearing colleagues write this way, that it’s the way to write.

It isn’t.

It isn’t by a long shot.