'TVRI' sloppy

From Kompas

Watching TVRI's evening weather report after the 9 p.m. news, I cannot help feeling a mixture of sadness and irritation. Whether realizing it or not, TVRI has offended wrong the flag of Egypt, a country predominantly located in Africa and friendly towards Indonesia during its struggle for independence. It was also one of the countries which spawned the non-block movement in the 1960s.

The same offense was meted out to Comoro, an island republic located off the African east coast between Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.

When TVRI shows Cairo's weather, Egypt's geographical position and its capital, Cairo, flashes on screen. A disturbing oddity though, is the flag at bottom of the right corner. TVRI screens a green flag with a new moon and three stars in the center.

As far as I know, the Egyptian flag is a tri-color horizontally striped flag -- red, white and black, in respective order (Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1990). An eagle adorns the white part of the flag. TVRI must be displaying a flag from another country. It has a strong resemblance to the flag of Comoro. However, after checking I found the Comoro flag sports five stars surrounding a new moon.

Another disturbing error was made during the coverage of Pancasila Sanctity Day, held at Lubang Buaya, East Jakarta, on Oct. 1 around 9 a.m. One of TVRI's reporters narrated the death of one of the G30S/PKI victims, the late Mayor General Donald Izaacus Panjaitan, and said he was killed on Oct. 1, 1965, at Lubang Buaya.

As far as I remember from history lessons in primary school, the late Mayor General D.I. Panjaitan lost his life at his home in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta.

I hope that TVRI realizes these "small" errors.

BAMBANG W.

Tangerang, West Java