The coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attack by the electronic media, particularly the 24-hour news channels, has been notable. These channels brought terror in a spectacular fashion into the drawing rooms of homes thousands of miles away from the attack spots as never before.
The gut-wrenching images of the victims and a burning Taj Mahal hotel were matched only by the visuals of our brave commandos rappelling onto Nariman House from a hovering helicopter. The electronic media deserves full credit for bringing home these live images, sometimes risking the life and limb of the reporters and camerapersons. As a print media person, for once, I felt envious of these young men and women reporting live from the scene of action. But the envy soon evaporated as the live coverage evolved into covering the extended siege and security action at the two five-star hotels.
What started off as plain reporting soon morphed into editorialising, as familiar anchorpersons descended on the action spots. Their views were mixed with the news freely, even as the screens were scrolling that the authorities had requested that live footage not be aired so as to not betray the plans of the assault forces to the terrorists creating mayhem inside the hotels.
The channels appeared to heed the request, but only temporarily, and live coverage was back soon. If that was bad, what followed was worse.
Crossing the fine line
Emotions took over even senior anchors across all the channels as they crossed the thin line from being a dispassionate observer reporting the event to becoming a part of the event itself. Worse still was to see the channels compete with each other to claim that each had exclusives. Was this the time to score brownie points over competition?
While all the reporting and visuals were focussed on the two hotels and Nariman House, the scene of the other horrendous massacre, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, was left with hardly any coverage. Dozens of lives were lost there, lives as precious as the ones lost in the two hotels, but strangely there was nary a camera or reporter to cover that. Why? There are e-mails doing the rounds asking this question.
Little moderation
Yet, all this appears minor compared to what has been unfolding the last couple of days on these channels.
One can’t help but feel that the electronic media is using the justified, spontaneous feeling of outrage of Mumbaikars to increase TRPs. The channels appear to be feeding off this expression of public outrage even while fanning it further. There was this programme on a prominent channel on Monday night that had Page 3 celebrities discussing the attack and expressing their disgust of the system and politicians.
One of the guests even suggested that we should all stop paying our taxes because the government failed to protect us and he was cheered by the others! Pray, how will this help us to stop terrorism? Are we trying to find solutions through live talk shows or are we adding to the problem?
It is but natural for hurt, outraged citizens to voice such views at a time like this but is it not the duty of the anchors or moderators, who are senior journalists, to moderate such views and put out a reasoned show to millions of viewers across the country?
Is journalism only all about attracting viewers and readers and not about reporting and analysing dispassionately?
