At the recent G20 Leaders’ Summit in Bharat aka India, Mr Lee Hsien Loong was introduced as the “outgoing Prime Minister” of Singapore in video commentary by the Indian English news magazine India Today.
The commentator then added that Mr Lee was set to be “replaced” by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
India Today hastily apologised since itas this was completely wrong.
First, Mr Lee willis expected to be around for some time – at least until the next General Elections – to come, and second, Mr Tharman is the President-elect and definitely not waiting in the wings to step in as PM.
One does wonder how such mistakes can occur in the Information Age. After all, everything is there on Google.
That’s very true but we also have Mr Murphy and his famous inescapable law that states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.”
So we have the India Today’s boo-boo during a telecast on YouTube. That’s a pretty large audience.
If the past is any indication, it doesn’t seem like these gaffes will be stopping anytime soon. Here are threesome rather noteworthy examples:
In 2021, local broadcaster Channel NewsAsia televised the wrong national flags in the SEA Games 2021 medal tally table on May 12. The mistakes were blindingly obvious. For instance, Malaysia’s flag represented Singapore and the Philippines’ flag was used for Vietnam.
After discovering the errors, the news channel made the necessary corrections and issued an apology.
Such boo-boos occur even at the largest international sporting events.
At the London Olympics in 2012, the South Korean flag was displayed next to the player profiles of the North Korean women’s football team.
The North Korean team stormed off the pitch but returned after profuse apologies from the organisers to win 2-0 against Colombia.
I wonder what may have happened if the North Koreans had lost.
That same year, the parody national anthem from the 2006 comedy film Borat was mistakenly played at the medal ceremony instead of the Kazakh national anthem at the 2012 Kuwait International Shooting Grand Prix.
A year later, the Ukrainian organisers played the Russian national anthem for the Ukrainian medallist at the 2013 World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships held in Ukraine.
As expected, all hell nearly broke loose.
The takeaway is that we cannot be too careful when it comes to matters dealing with a country’s identity or political leaders.
You can check, double-check and even get a second pair of eyes and ears, but then there will still be occasions when Murphy’s law will prevail.
