<i> Dumbspeak</i> : Joycelyn Elders Isn’t TV’s Only Master

How can you turn the world upside down?

--Claire Bloom to Richard Burton in “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold”

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The Say what? report . . .

President Clinton’s recent firing of Joycelyn Elders as U.S. surgeon general affirms the hazards of being publicly inarticulate or imprecise when you’re an outspoken, controversial federal official who gets on television a lot.

Regardless of Elders’ public health agenda, her inability to express herself clearly in the TV age is reason enough to disqualify her from such a high-profile post where words can be interpreted as policy. No wonder her recent comments during a televised public gathering were enough to sink her, especially when taken out of context (ABC’s “Nightline” was that rare news program that ran a fuller version of Elders’ remarks).

Teach masturbation in schools? Surely, Elders meant teach kids about masturbation as an alternative to sexual intercourse.

Not that TV viewers are unaccustomed to dumbspeak .

The cliche tag, “Only time will tell,” still adorns many a TV news story, just as the hackneyed “he (or she) will be missed” is mandatory for TV obits, especially when the deceased won’t be missed. Just about everywhere on TV, people who lie down are inevitably “laying down,” and reporters continue to report on the “mood” of a city, region or nation--as if able to measure public opinion by thrusting an index finger into the air.

When it comes to the Simpson-Goldman murder case, moreover, just about every ruling from Judge Lance Ito is reported locally as a “big blow” suffered by someone, as in his decision Monday to reject a prosecution motion for disclosure of a reportedly emotional jailhouse exchange between O.J. Simpson and minister Rosey Grier. Labeling it a “big blow” to the prosecution, which some newscasts did, misleadingly gave it weight equal to another Ito ruling Monday, against the defense’s request to scale back a hearing on the admissibility of DNA evidence.

And hear this: “There is renewed speculation this morning that O.J. Simpson is running out of cash.”

That was KNBC-TV Channel 4 reporter Kelly Mack on Monday, live in the darkness outside the criminal courts building . . .

At 6:30 a.m.

Say what? Just who would be speculating anew about Simpson’s bank account at that hour? The homeless in downtown Los Angeles? Hardly. Mack herself? You may be getting warmer.

Actually, this had the ring of reporterese for I’m speculating or reporters are speculating, a way of slipping in opinion under the guise of objectivity. In this case, of course, the speculation was rooted in Simpson defense attorneys’ claim that a separate, extended DNA hearing would further cripple their client financially.

Such reporterese is not exclusive to any branch of media. While covering City Hall in Louisville, Ky., for example, my colleagues and I practiced it. We preferred “City Hall observers say” to “speculation”--the “observers” being ourselves.

Mack also referred Monday to the much-discussed jailhouse chat between Simpson and Grier, saying, “That conversation is said to be incriminating.” Added Channel 4’s Tracie Savage later about comments the accused killer may have shouted to Grier: “Sources have said that they incriminate” Simpson. No qualification, no elaboration, merely that “they incriminate.”

Oh, really. Just who “said” that, and what is their agenda? There’s been speculation galore about what Simpson said, and it’s in the prosecution’s best interest that the Simpson-Grier jailhouse exchange be seen as incriminating. Yet the only public account, coming from a jail guard who says he overheard Simpson shout and slam down a phone, omitted details of the conversation. Because of Ito’s ruling, moreover, they may never be revealed.

The defense sought to exclude the reported outburst from the trial. Infer what you wish from that. Yet unless Channel 4 has something substantial to add beyond unqualified, fuzzy accusations from anonymous sources--the station admitted being burned by its sources in an earlier Simpson reporting gaffe--it’s spewing irresponsible guesswork.

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The Big Sleep: After greyhounds stop racing, “they tend to be put to sleep,” said a reporter for “Breakfast Time,” a series on cable’s FX network.

The reporter was doing a story last week on an admirable program to get people to adopt these magnificent, sleek beauties. Good for her. But did she say greyhounds tend to be put to sleep? That made it sound almost as if the dogs initiated their “sleep.”

Hardly. They’re killed, at a relatively young age, when their owners no longer deem then financially profitable. Can’t race, can’t live.

And enough already with the feel-good euphemisms--”destroying” or the even more misleading “putting to sleep”--when it comes to humans slaying animals. The “Breakfast Time” reporter urged the adoption of greyhounds, for example, “so they don’t have to sleep.”

“Sleep” you awaken from, death you don’t. Greyhounds and other animals are put to sleep the way human victims are put to sleep.

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Sans Lindsay: They sit on stools facing the camera. “This is ‘Ford Today,’ ” says the smiling female half of the hosting team as her equally genial male partner listens at her side.

A commercial for Thunderbird minus usual Ford pitchwoman Lindsay Wagner, the spot is designed to resemble a morning news segment. Hence its deployment largely before and during network morning shows, the apparent purpose being to blur lines and fool inattentive viewers into thinking that they’re watching something they’re not.

For several years now, program-length infomercials have sought to create an illusion of credibility by embracing the formats of talk shows or newscasts. But this is the first such 30-second spot in some time. It’s clever.

Beware, America.

This is Deception Today.

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WHOA!: “Whom is paying who?”

Whom said that recently? CNN anchor Leon Harris, that’s whom is the guy whom said it. The bigger question: Whom’s on first?