Sunday, November 30, 2008
Media Coverage of Mumbai Siege
Continuous television media coverage of Mumbai siege spread over 60 hours has come in for both praise and criticism from many quarters. I, like most of us, was riveted to the screen and kept channel hopping from NDTV to CNN-IBN to Times Now. Yes it helped us Indians know what is happening and made us all feel collectively outraged by the terrorists' cruelty. But there was an other side too. Some people felt that blow-by-blow account of commandos' and other security force's activities will be monitored by terrorist's friends elsewhere, who in turn would have relayed it to them and give them advance information of when and where they will be fired upon. Media need to draw a line and yes, most channels started to self-censor their broadcast on the last day of coverage of Taj and Nariman House siege.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The coverage was an over exposure.
Sixty hours of non-stop pounding was extremely punishing.
Infact from Thursday night onwards, they were not updated with the latest. Authorities had also by then requested to tone down the telecasts.....
The terrorists were being updated through satellite phones. They had access to wireless internet but doubt if they had the time to surf once things got hot.
The real danger has been the trauma caused to all viewers of this coverage. It was raw and would have created a lot of emotional distress.
Krishnan, after that nonstop verbal and visual excitement covered on TV, the print media is also going overboard. Yesterday TOI reported that if the terrorists had attacked the BARC instead of Hotel Taj, only a few km away on the same coast, we would have been paralysed. I think such kind of reports only give ideas to terrorists. Why did the media have to print this for public consumption? Would not the same have been informed to the Intelligence agencies so that we can be more prepared in future?
Post a Comment