Passive with Reporting Verbs

1. The structure

When we want to report what people say, believe, think, report, etc., we use an impersonal passive construction.

1) it + is/was reported/said + that + clause

The television reported that a fire broke out in the centre.

It is reported that a fire broke out in the centre.

2) passive subject + is/was reported + to infinitive or

passive subject + is/was reported + to have participle

The television reported that a fire broke out in the centre.

A fire was reported to have broken out in the centre.

2. Reporting verbs

Examples of reporting verbs we can use:

assume, calculate, claim, consider, discover, estimate, expect, feel, hope, know, prove, report, say, show, think, understand, agree, believe, find, mean, presume, regard, suppose, etc.

Dinosaurs are believed to have died out millions of years ago.

Mr Smith is expected to arrive shortly.

The costs were calculated to be over the budget.

3. Continuous events

Look at the examples:

The neighbours think that Mr. Jack is living in Paris.

Mr. Jack is thought to be living in Paris.

The family believed that Frank was working for the CIA.

Frank was believed to be working for the CIA.

In these sentences ‘is living’ and ‘was working’ are continuous tenses, therefore, their passive form is ‘to be doing’.

4. Earlier events

Study these examples:

• The news reports that the president has been re-elected.
• The president is reported to have been re-elected.

a) The teacher reported that Kate had cheated in the exam.

b) Kate was reported to have cheated in the exam.

In these examples, ‘has been re-elected’ and ‘had cheated’ are actions which happened before ‘reports’ and ‘reported’ therefore their passive form is ‘to have done’ or ‘to have been done’

5. Double passive

Look at the example:

• His friends feared that Joe was kidnapped.
• Joe was feared to have been kidnapped.

As you can see, this sentence contains two passive parts: ‘was feared’ (this is the reporting part) and ‘to have been kidnapped’ (this is the original passive part). This often happens when the original sentence contains a passive part.