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Which of the sentences below are correct?

And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at how can you get more revenue back into local news.

And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at how you can get more revenue back into local news.

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    In context, they are both perfectly correct. 'How can you' do something translates into 'how is it possible to' do something. Read sentence 1 as: 'And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look how it is possible to get more revenue back into local news. Sentence 1 doesn't know if it is possible, sentence 2 assumes it is possible, but the method has not yet been found. BillJ's not normally permitted 'subordinate subject auxiliary inversion interrogative' thingo can be responded to with 'idiomatic usage'.
    – mcalex
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 8:21
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    @mcalex: I really cannot parse sentence #1 as it is. It's possible to add a colon or quotes, though, as described by cruthers.
    – Eric Duminil
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 12:59
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    @User122 Of course you can't parse #1 -- it's grammatically incorrect, plain and simple. There are, however, certain embedded questions where, mainly in some AmE dialects, inversion is found, but this is not one of them!
    – BillJ
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 16:19
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    The kind that can (in certain US dialects) allow inversion are those in contexts of strong question-orientation, e.g. "She asked [what has she done wrong]" / "He wanted to know [was she ill]" and the like.
    – BillJ
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 16:26
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    @EricDuminil en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacoluthon
    – fectin
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 13:20

2 Answers 2

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(2) is correct as BillJ's comment states. (1) appears incorrect as written. But the excerpt is from a speech by Obama, who says the words in the order set forth in (1), so it's worth looking at the video. (He says it at 58:10 in the link below.)

After listening, I think the transcriber could have just as well written:

And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at: how can you get more revenue back into local news?

This sets up the embedded question directly, which is a more colloquial style, and there is nothing incorrect here. It's possible that this is how Obama intended it to come across, or it's possible that he just kind of stumbled through the point a bit (as is also evident), or some combination of the two.

Challenges democracy digital information realm

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    Your interpretation makes sense. But also, it’s fairly common to inadvertently transpose or omit words in speech.
    – Davislor
    Commented May 30, 2022 at 8:09
  • This interpretation doesn't seem likely unless he was introducing a list of questions that Congress was trying to answer.
    – Barmar
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 0:03
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    @Davislor It is of course important to note that just because the usage is common does not make it correct.
    – Prime Mover
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 6:06
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    @PrimeMover Right. Even with the help of teleprompters, every recent president has sometimes omitted or misspoken a word from time to time.
    – Davislor
    Commented May 31, 2022 at 7:04
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[1] And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at [how can you get more revenue back into local news].

[2] And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at [how you can get more revenue back into local news].

[2] is correct. The bracketed element in each of these examples is a subordinate interrogative clause (embedded question). But [1] has subject-auxiliary inversion, which is not normally permitted in subordinate interrogatives.

The meaning is:

"And I know Congress has been engaged with some of these companies to look at the answer to the question 'How can you get more revenue back into local news?'"

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