TV3 has apologised to Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching for accidentally broadcasting a reply in Mandarin to a question in Bahasa Malaysia during its Malay news programme.
Selamat datang Timbalan Menteri Pendidikan dari negara China. Selamat datang ke bumi Malaysia. pic.twitter.com/2aDdAcueBi
— Fariz Hadi (@Fariz_H) October 2, 2019
The purported mistake triggered intense criticism on social media against the DAP deputy minister, including from an Umno Youth executive committee member Fariz Hadi who sarcastically welcomed Teo as the “Deputy Education Minister from China” and included the erroneous clip in his Tweet yesterday that has since drawn over 6,000 retweets and nearly 3,000 “likes”.
The mishap occurred when Teo answered a journalist’s question in Bahasa Malaysia, but was asked to repeat her answer in Mandarin for broadcast in the Mandarin news segments on NTV7 and 8TV, sister stations of TV3.
However, a report on TV3’s Bulletin Utama show yesterday used the footage of Teo replying in Mandarin to a reporter’s question in Malay.
“TV3 apologises to Deputy Minister of Education Teo Nie Ching and viewers of Bulletin Utama following a report published on Oct 2,” read the statement broadcast in last night’s news bulletin.
It said the error was unintentional.
The apology was highlighted in a tweet last night by Syahredzan Johan, civil liberties lawyer and political secretary to Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang.