NDTV is truly the gift which keeps on giving. Social media users, were amused today, when NDTV put out the following report:
In today’s fast-paced life, most news consumers do not read beyond the headline, and NDTV’s headline and tweet seemed to indicate that a US astronaut who had smuggled a sandwich on a space mission, had died, and the headline tried to draw a direct connection between the smuggling of the sandwich incident, and the death of the astronaut.
But the story said something completely different: John Young, the astronaut who died, had smuggled the sandwich on board way back in 1965. The sandwich and his death in 2018 had no connection. The headline was plain misleading, and in fact an example of poor, click-bait journalism. Many social media users pointed this out to NDTV:
A perfect example of what a headline should not look like.
— Saurabh Joshi (@saurabhiaf) January 7, 2018
The headline makes it sound as if the smuggled sandwich was the cause of his death! https://t.co/rFxSAPulG8
— Desi Existentialist (@simichahal) January 7, 2018
He smuggled the sandwich in 1965
He died in 2018.This is how headlines mislead https://t.co/n8GaaSrw39
— Gabbbar (@GabbbarSingh) January 7, 2018
Soon, NDTV changed the headline, but the sandwich still hogged the limelight:
So is the “sandwich” the only thing worth remembering about John Young? Probably not. Young was a very accomplished astronaut: the only astronaut to fly in the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs (and the first to command a shuttle flight); and the first to fly into space six times. NASA also said he once held the world record for total time spent in space.
Young and another astronaut, Gus Grissom , commanded the first space shuttle mission on the Gemini 3, in what some people called “the boldest test flight in history.” He also commanded Gemini 10, the first mission to rendezvous with two other spacecraft during a single flight. While in the navy, Young set world records for the fastest ascension from a standing start in an F-4 Phantom II jet. Surely, much better things to be remembered by than a smuggled sandwich.
The best (or worst) part in this entire saga is that this particular report had been published by NDTV from a syndicated feed, and besides the headline, the story was not edited by NDTV staff. Basically, NDTV had one job to do: Give it a decent headline, and they screwed up:
The original story by reuters, which was syndicate by NDTV, had a much more apt headline:
You had one job NDTV!
