New Delhi: In yet another slipup, Doordarshan’s official twitter account tweeted a picture of PM Narendra Modi at the BJP parliamentary board with an embarrassing caption which said a man dressed as Santa was feeding monkeys in a zoo. This comes days after a video of its anchor covering the International Film Festival in Goa went viral as ‘Dumb anchor at IFFI’,
The tweet went viral within minutes despite the fact that @DDNewsLive withdrew the tweet describing it as an error.
The junior content executive who was responsible for the mix-up and her supervisor have been shunted out of the social media responsibility according to Akshay Rout, DD News additional DG.
DD news tweeted early on Wednesday morning, “Jingle all the way!! … A man dressed as Santa Claus feeds monkeys ahead of Christmas at a zoo in China” for a picture of the BJP parliamentary board showing PM Modi, party chief Amit Shah, ministers Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj sitting round a table.
When the blunder was noticed, DD redacted the tweet with the message, “Dear followers there has been an error. Story has been put with correct picture again. Kindly don’t misinterpret news.” The correct caption to the story was “BJP Parliamentary Board to meet today to decide future course of action” which was tweeted later.
However, by the time the corrected tweet appeared, the public broadcaster had become the butt of jokes on social media. Officials said that the mix-up with the caption and the picture was an inadvertent error and the junior content executive and her supervisor have been shifted out of her responsibilities.
Rout said, “Any such incidents like these bring a lesson to the supervisory staff. We are working towards social media interaction that is error-free, responsible, correct and better supervised. We will find a mechanism to strengthen all gate-keeping and train our staff.”
Earlier, in September, during a late night bulletin on a DD News anchor pronounced Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name as ‘Eleven’ Jinping, confusing Xi with the Roman numerical for eleven. The anchor was then removed.
During the J&K floods, a DD reporter described Shankracharya hill as “Suleiman Hills” and was pulled off air.
In an IFFI video, the anchor was seen introducing the governor of Goa Mridula Sinha as the “Governor of India”. The anchor came under heavy criticism following which she later admitted to having suicidal thoughts.