One of the world’s leading newspapers, The New York Times on Wednesday left Indians fuming as it described Lata Mangeshkar a “so-called playback singer”.
In a report on the Tanmay Bhat controversy – NYT said, “In the expletive-laced video, which was created on Snapchat, Mr Bhat uses that app’s face-swap feature to impersonate Sachin Tendulkar , a hugely popular cricketer who retired in 2013, and Lata Mangeshkar, a so-called playback singer for Bollywood films whose career dates to the 1940s. Playback singers record vocals for song-and-dance numbers, to which actors and actresses lip sync.”
This statement drew strong criticism from Twitterati, which made Ellen Barry, the South Asia bureau chief of The New York Times to come up with the clarification.
Defending the News Paper, Ellen Barry, tweeted:
A note on “so-called”: Used here for non-Indian readers unfamiliar w term “playback singer.” In no way a commentary. https://t.co/hEYttcd3za
— Ellen Barry (@EllenBarryNYT) May 31, 2016