Media coverage of the Mumbai attacks

As I write this, the long drama of terrorist attack on Mumbai sponsored by some insane individuals and broadcast live by innumerable sensation seeking news channels has come to an end. While the drama of gunfire has ended, the drama of rhetoric has just started. Of how significant is the structure of the Taj hotel is and how 106 years is such a long history that we will go on talking about it for days. While the larger plot of terrorism has rightfully attracted the wrath of the Indian public in general, I was flabbergasted by the many subplots that were there in the whole episode that have shaken me up. The various episodes were a mirror of the way the Indian media has shaped up in the recent history.

Does anyone really know that of the 183 people killed, a third of them were killed in the first firing at the CST Station? Have the news channels bothered to show the pain of people who were caught in the crossfire and stories of people who were lucky to survive the bullet rain? Why do our channels believe that the life of someone staying in the Taj or Oberoi is more important and valuable than the shoe polish maker or a sundry businessman died at the CST? The news channels have spent hours together on describing the glory of the Taj, its long history of 106 years (that’s less than what my grand father’s age would have been) and how many people thought it was their second home. Lets leave aside the Hindi news channels; lesser the said about them the better it is. Even the English channels fell prey to the sensationalizing disease. The anchors did not miss a single chance to highlight how they were covering the encounter and they were the first to break the news which later turned out in most cases was not even news. It was as if the news channels were under a compulsion to break a news item every five minutes otherwise the viewer would use his great weapon called remote control. The news channels did not even show basic maturity of confirming news items before airing it in a frightening manner. They were rightly blacked out for over an hour by the authorities; I would think they should have been blacked out for the entire duration of the encounter or their crew should have been thrown out of the area by at least a few kms.

The worst example of intrusive journalism was when one of the most well known faces of Indian journalism was goading relatives of hostages to talk to the microphone. Why can’t we let them some privacy when they were facing possibly the most difficult period of their lives? After release of every batch of hostages, the kind of mobbing that news reporters did to the hostages was stinking. When a hostage walked out with a baby in his hand, one journalist kept asking many a question. One such question pained him so much that he finally yelled “yes it is my baby”. Why can’t our media show maturity in covering events of such individual disaster?

Then there were interviews of people who had experienced or known people who had experienced terror for the first time. As you can guess these were people who never had to travel by a local train or had to go to a public park for a family outing. They were outraged that “enough is enough”. How hypocritical of them! Where were these people when India was hit by those 20 odd terrorist strikes in the last four years, that too by home grown terrorists? Suddenly now that terror is in their door steps, it suddenly has become so much important? I think by this incidence, we have proven that our class divide has taken over caste divide in urban India and how the class divide shows how we value our lives. The unfortunate summary of the last week’s proceedings in the media is that life of someone who earns one lakh rupees a month and possibly saved enough for his family for a few years is more valuable than someone who earns 2000 rupees a month and lives hand to mouth. It is this realization that makes my head hang in shame as much as the intelligence failure that let terrorists into the country.

Now let us look at their coverage of the encounter. The fundamental fact was that they had no clue what was happening inside. The biggest breaking news items they had for two full days were – “the action has picked up a lot in the last half an hour”, “the NSG commandoes have launched the final assault”, “we heard some huge explosions”, “there has been some intense gun fire in the last twenty minutes”. Is this news? Why say it at all? It was the height of sensationalism by the media to garner eye balls. The reporters on the ground would speculate without a clue of about the actual status. I can understand this from the Hindi news channels, but when NDTV and CNN-IBN start doing it, you realize there is a problem with the system. I won’t be surprised if one of these channels release some TRP ratings which shows that theirs was the most watched channel during 26/11.

Let me ask a more fundamental question – why there was media in the first place to give minute by minute account? Were they not helping the terrorists inside by letting them know exactly what the strategy was? One sheepish justification one TV news reader gave was that access to cable television has been cut off inside the hotel. That is one of the silliest statements ever heard; can someone watching CNN-IBN in Karachi or Malad not inform the terrorists about the outside happenings on a cell phone or a satellite phone? I think the media jeopardized the operation to some extent, particularly in the Nariman house case. They had no business to be anywhere close to any of the terror sites.

What is the Indian public interested in? A fast and efficient end to the encounter. We do not want minute by minute update of the encounter. I could have lived for two more days to figure out how exactly did NSG commandoes to flush out the terrorists. Why on earth did the Navy let its commandoes face the press? Let’s take for a moment that it was necessary to keep the public informed about the proceedings till date; did we need the commandoes to address the press conference?

Finally, ‘resilience of Mumbai’ – I think it is a clique to call this one now. It has been so often repeated that I have to resist myself from puking at such statements. We have horribly confused resilience with lack of value for lives.