BBC adding emoji to Vande Bharat report is callow and shallow
If the BBC has suddenly discovered the joys of emoji-spattered news, we can't wait to see how it will report on the train wreck called Brexit.
Hello BBC News,
Recently, you were quite surprised at a train ‘breaking down’ in India. This is what you tweeted:
India high speed train breaks down on first trip ??https://t.co/hOitimNmqj
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 16, 2019
But, dear BBC, you seem to have forgotten your own stiff upper lip credo.
As a news website, your job is to give people the news. Not to share your feelings, excitable though these may be, about a particular news item.
Of course, there are opinion columns dedicated to sharing views. But this was a simple news piece. You could — should — have stopped at telling your readers exactly what had happened.
Why did you feel it necessary to also tell your readers how surprised you were by the “break down” by adding an emoji? Is that your idea of great journalism? Or perhaps, of great maturity?
What's next? Emojis with every story? Let's see how well that works out for you!
By the way, while you painted such meaningful layers onto your reporting with full-on emotion, you seem to have slipped up a little on the facts.
The train didn’t 'break down'. Vande Bharat, a product of the Make in India initiative, stopped temporarily after it struck cattle on the tracks.
Also, nowhere does your copy mention that this was not a commercial run. The Vande Bharat began commercial operations only on February 17. It ran without glitches and tickets for it are sold out for the next two weeks.
Delhi: Vande Bharat Express leaves for Varanasi on its first commercial run. Tickets already sold out for the next two weeks. pic.twitter.com/quCjs8jXaf
— ANI (@ANI) February 17, 2019
Your copy quite ambiguously says the train broke down during “its first outing”. The train experienced a problem during a trial run — something expressly meant to check out potential problems.
Of course, there could be a chance that BBC News as an organisation didn’t want to mock Vande Bharat. That the emoji was the passionate creative idea of some young, excitable rookie. But the tweet has been up for two days now. Surely, if the British Broadcasting Corporation didn’t agree with emoji-ing news (in which case, they're going to need to start pasting a huge number of emojis onto every copy they do), they could have had the story retweeted — and corrected?
And, in any case India’s problem might be one malfunctioning train.
Britain is dealing with the train wreck in slow-mo called Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal has been rejected by the British Parliament. The Opposition seems more interested in forcing an election than getting Brexit sorted. Some sections want another referendum on the whole idea of leaving the EU. Others want a ‘no-deal’ Brexit —a potentially disastrous plan that would throw everything from major businesses to lives of ordinary citizens into chaos.
All rather bigger issues than one train not satisfactorily finishing a trial run.
Therefore, dear BBC, before mocking other countries, please do focus on Britain. To be able to suitably embellish just your Brexit-related coverage, you would need to use up the entire emoji arsenal, and maybe also have some new ones specially made.
An idea for Make in Britain, perhaps, once your manufacturing sector recovers from the Brexit earthquake?