Private expert probing DD broadcast bloopers

NEW DELHI: Prasar Bharati has pressed a two-member team consisting of a private media professional and a senior internal staffer to probe a series of recent embarrassing broadcasting blunders at DD News.

The team will probe several recent glitches, including a controversy over a senior reporter’s choice of names to describe certain landmark places while reporting from Kashmir recently.

In the most embarrassing of these on-air meltdowns, an anchor recently mispronounced the visiting Chinese president Xi Jinping first name as “eleven”. She mistook it for the Roman numerical.

A news bulletin also wrongly showed visuals of former PM Manmohan Singh, instead of Narendra Modi.

The team is also inquiring into a controversy over a Delhi-based correspondent’s use of the certain Muslim-sounding names for two locations in Kashmir Valley while reporting the recent flooding. The reporter referred to Anantnag as Islamabad and Shankarcharya as Suleiman Hill. Both names are widely used by locals. This however led to angry reactions. Sources said these complaints, alleging that the reporter had used “separatist” language, forced a probe on her.

Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar said there were larger systemic issues behind these problems. “All of these happened during night shift (barring the Kashmir one). Some are clerical mistakes, which have a high visibility dimension and which cause severe embarrassment,” he said.

Sircar said these “mistakes” apart, DD News had some “very good feathers in the cap”. “Nobody takes notice of good work, like out coverage of Mars Orbiter.” “People get after you only when are ahead,” he said.