Goof-ups continue in DD news and the latest culprit is an anchor-cum-correspondent travelling with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US who addressed him as Manmohan Singh during a live telecast on Monday evening.
“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will fly to Washington tonight,” he stated during live telecast of the news at 9:30 pm.
On September 28, the anchor, while interacting with two other anchors, recalled that he had gone to New York in 2013 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister.
“Let me take you back a bit. I had come to New York earlier in 2013 when Mr Vajpayee was the prime minister of India,” he said during the telecast at 9:15 pm.
Interestingly, Vajpayee has been suffering from dementia and long-term diabetes. He has not ventured out of his residence for several years.
The same anchor was heard asking people, during a Hindi bulletin of DD news, how they felt seeing the first Gujarati prime minister of India visit New York. “He perhaps had no clue that Morarji Desai was the first Gujarati prime minister of India,” sources told Deccan Herald.
On September 27 at 5:40 pm, a DD news anchor said that 9/11 took place on September 9, 2011. “It’s embarrassing. The entire world knows that the incident took place on September 11, 2001,” sources added.
When contacted, Director-General of DD news Archana Dutta said: “These are unpardonable mistakes. I am taking corrective measures and trying my best to improve the system. Soon after joining, I created a monitoring mechanism. It’s because of this such things are coming to notice. Earlier, there was no such monitoring mechanism.”
Necessary action will be taken against those who are committing such mistakes, she added. Sources, however, said the saga of goof ups continues because no befitting action is taken against those committing such mistakes.
“One casual anchor was recently removed for pronouncing Chinese president Xi Jinping’s name as Eleven Jinping. But no action has so far been taken against others who are committing major mistakes during live telecasts. Sometime memos are served but no follow up action is taken. After some time, the same person will be back into business ,” sources added.