JAMMU/NEW DELHI: Adding to recent howlers, one pertaining to Sakal Bhattt highlighted by STATE TIMES, a visual of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was run on Doordarshan instead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi before a news segment relating to his current visit to the United States.
Sources told PTI that the “inadvertent error” happened in one of the late evening bulletins yesterday when Doordarshan News carried Singh’s visual instead Modi before introducing news-stories related to the Prime Minister’s US visit.
Sources said the same visual was aired in some of other time slots as well.
When contacted, senior Doordarshan officials said the matter is being looked into.
A senior official said Doordarshan News had put into place a monitoring mechanism which immediately identifies if any error has occurred.
Recently, a newsreader on Doordarshan had mistaken ‘Xi’ in visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name for Roman numeral ‘eleven’ and pronounced it thus.
In another incident, DD News officials had set up an internal committee after one of its correspondents while reporting on Kashmir floods reportedly used the words ‘Islamabad’ for ‘Anantnag’ and ‘Sulaiman’ hill for Shankaracharya hill.
The ‘mischievous’ stories, anchored by Sakal Bhatt to appease a particular lobby in Kashmir, were highlighted by STATE TIMES.
The erring anchor had done the ‘mischief’ continuously for several days by distorting the names of landmarks and townships in Kashmir.
After naming Shankracharaya as Koh-e-Suleman in repeated voice-overs while reporting on the flood havoc in Kashmir, Sakal Bhatt had provoked a particular audience next day again by calling Annantnag as Islamabad. This terminology is used by separatists, secessionists and some mainstream leaders who want themselves to be seen on both sides of fence. Syed Ali Geelani and several over ground sympathisers of various terror organisations had issued a veiled diktat to people immediately after the outbreak of militancy to use green sign boards and name certain areas by the names which are not in the revenue records.
