Oberoi and ‘Nariman house’ have been conquered by our brave army men and sooner or later Taj will also be secured. But what next?
A few days of continuous coverage over media, less about the real issues and more about bites from celebrities and politicians, some of them will come up with absolute emotional stories. Politicians in power will talk about not tolerating terrorism(but what else have we done in last 2 decades?), Opposition will term it as an intelligence/security failure and demand for resignation of the party in power(for nothing else but for early and favourable elections). This will remain the topic for hot discussions in offices for a few more days and then .. then life will go on as usual.
Rather than talking about the society at large, we can simply look at the conduct of our media and that will be a true reflection of who we are.
We have all seen this, besides some rare incidents of responsible coverage we have seen an all out war amongst media houses for that exclusive footage, that exclusive talk with eyewitnesses, that extra bit of drama, and so on. Here are some of the most appalling incidents –
Live coverage: No one sitting in front of the television set needs an up to date account of what is happenning there minute by minute. Things like “as you can see..just now a set of 20-25 commandos are entering from the backside of the Taj”. Given that there was information about militants having satelite links established outside..such information could easily be available to them. and btw what value are you adding by doing this?(I noticed that surprisingly Star News refrained from using live feeds)
That extra bit of drama: A Zee-news reporter was lying on the road and reporting in a manner as if he is reporting while in serious cross-fire. While actually the whole bunch of media persons were right there.. half a foot behind him and all were sitting calmly (perhaps because they were not on air), Barkha Dutt was also seen screaming without much reason, looked desperate to be seen as doing a sensational piece of coverage.
Why troubling the forces:These media men are required to be cordoned-off repeatedly, a considerable effort of the security forces is spent on ensuring their security as many of these fools will just not respect the guidelines of reporting within the drawn lines. And then there stupid questions to the front line policemen, “Sir, whats happenning inside?”, “How many terrorists are there?”, “What are you planning to do next?”.
Insensitiveness: We don’t want you to pounce on the just rescued people as if they are your prey. If the person is in a sound state of mind and is willing to share his thought ..fine go ahead!
But in most of the cases the victims were not in a position to tell anything, they did not want this much intrusion and perhaps had nothing particular to share, but still they were virtually chased down by these media men. Someone finishes on one channel “I don’t know anything..saw nothing.. were just guided out by the commandos..” and suddenly a desperate Rajdeep Sardesai(who will otherwise sound so refined, concerned and hard hitting journalist) will come and literally grab the victim with both hands.. He will resist but our media bigwig will not hear anything, he’ll almost drag him and take him in front of his own camera to repeat the same thing.. will ask the same questions, knowing well the answers himself. What kind of journalism is this(and especially if it comes from the editor-in-chief of such a well known channel)?
Switch on any news channel and you hear the word ‘exclusive’ in almost all the sentences. I even heard a phrase called ‘exclusive victim comments’.
Just extend this behavior of media and you will see hundreds of people, most of whom have no purpose to be there, thronging these places..looking in to the TV cameras to have there own moments of existence on national television or to simply experience a live thriller.
Coming back to media, it’s an absolute certainty that in the next few days our media will run reports from all around the Mumbai to tell you that Mumbai has sprung back.. Mumbai is not threatened.. usual traffic..usual environment and so on..as if nothing happened.. and thats the true spirit of Mumbai!
But for God’s sake please hold on, is this the spirit of Mumbaikers or just the fact that a common man is forced to go out for his livelihood? or a gross insensitivity on the part of our society at large.
Why spring back? Why not stand and assess whats happening around us, Has it become a part of our lives? Who is accountable for this? Why do we need to live under a threat for no fault of ours? and what is the solution of all this?
‘Springing back’ is a phrase that has been overkilled in India. A society bounces back from a shock, when it tries to get back to normalcy. After any big attack the perceived risk is likely to soar much higher than the actual risk.. so bouncing back is the process of bringing this perceived risk down towards the actual risk. Something what happened in America after the WTC took place. The Systems were reviewed, the actual risk came down considerably and the society bounced back.. back to its business.
But what about India? Have we done anything to justify this bounce back? are we feeling any bit safer now?
I know the answers, and just wish that we, as a society can actually bounce back in terms of our approach, mentality and response towards terror and not just through those shots of overcrowded CST to be shown as a sign of bouncing back.
(Perhaps I have been over critical about the role of media, many of the media persons were amidst all this and must have felt a real ‘call for duty’ while doing this coverage with all the good intentions.. but sometimes the pressures of market results in such filtering and tweaking of news that the coverage comes out as just a desperate attempt for higher TRPs at the cost of being completely insensitive to the situation)