Biggest Indian Media Mishaps on Live TV

‘To err is human’. We all make mistakes – some big, some small and we have to live with the consequences but most of our mistakes are known to our family, friends and coworkers only. With 47.3 crore people watching the news every day on televisions (on 430 news channels in India alone) the news anchors aren’t so lucky when they make a mistake.

In today’s digital world, you don’t need to be a fortune teller to predict the impact (and peril) of a mistake on a live channel these days. It surely and instantly becomes a meme and spread all over social media within hours. Listed here are the time’s anchors did a mistake on a media platform.

1) Lockdown increased in West Bengal to 40th April 2020

Staying under a nationwide lockdown for over a month now, we have been spending more time watching the news channel. We all would have come across Chitra Tripathi, an anchor from Aajtak news channel stating that Mamta Banerji extended the lockdown till 40th April making herself a meme overnight.

2) Mixup – Name or Number

In 2014, a DD anchor had to lose her job just because she mistook the letter ‘Xi’ with roman number eleven and said out loud on the Doordarshan news channel on live broadcast. There were memes about it and it led to the anchor losing her job in less than 24 hours of the telecast.

3) Video Faked during natural calamities

When Indian news channels run out of ideas, they turn to other news channels and WhatsApp forwards for inspiration. During the natural calamities of flood in Uttrakhand, ABP news posted a video about an incident that happened in Bolivia as Uttrakhand.

This gave a solid dent to the credibility of ABP news and caused a drop in their TRP. This incident was also criticized widely over Twitter.

4) Confusion between Nationality

A woman was the victim of rape on 4th November 2012 and NDTV and IBN news channel telecasted news with different nationalities of the same victim. This was pointed out and both the channels were trolled over Twitter.

5) America and the United Kingdom – Same Flag?

Times now live was covering a plane crash death toll when they projected a glitch while broadcasting. They mixed the maps of the USA with the UK and it was trolled over Twitter for their lack of knowledge of maps around the world.

6) How is the News up there?

Everyone wants to try a new way of presenting their news to get a hike in TRP, but it became a nightmare for Narayan Pargaien who was reporting on the floods in Uttarakhand.

He reported his news while sitting on the shoulders of a disaster victim. The news wasn’t broadcasted but the video went viral on youtube and other media sharing platforms. He was fired after this incident.

7) We Have the Highest TRP

During the 2014 Lok sabha counting day, we strike through various news channels to see which is the most updated one, at the end of the day its a war for TRP and when all news channels claim to be Number 1 as the peoples choice to watch their channels, We all know something is wrong. All news channels tweeted claiming to be number one in a span of 48 hours.

8) Spelling a search engine

Anchor on zee news channel was going through a report about google campus in India but the background had its say for goggle campuses. The background also stating that #gogglecampus was trending on Twitter. This mistake went more viral than the news making it no less than a meme and troll for a news channel

9) Lets Brawl on Live TV

A discussion on Radheh maa was underway on CNN news 18, where a comment by Swami Om fumed Dipa Sharma to assault him and it all was witnessed by everyone and circulated on WhatsApp and Twitter with memes circulating all around.

10) Sunny Leone leading in Polls

It would be a shocker if Arnab Goswami is not on this list. During the 2019 elections, Arnab Goswami mistook or misspelled Sunny Deol with sunny leone and Twitter had a lot to say. With all social media platforms overflowing with memes about the same, this mistake is the one to be remembered by all.