Media: The REAL terror?

According to me, the terrorists always win when they get EXTENSIVE media coverage after every attack and I won’t be surprised if we see a movie released next year on the recent Mumbai attacks. Instead of converting news to drama, they really need to take a step back and let the police and army do their jobs.

I was more shocked at the media frenzy than I was with the Mumbai attacks. Don’t get me wrong. I am equally hurt, angry and horrified with what happened. But as I said, I sat in disbelief watching NDTV live and how their reporters dramatized every single thing. In one instance they interviewed this lady who had just been rescued from the Taj hotel. She seemed totally in control of herself and mentioned how their wing had been safe all along and how cooperative the hotel staff had been. However when one of the NDTV reporters later reiterated what she had said – it came out as she was horrified and how she would never be the same again and that’s how everyone inside felt. Well, she did not for once mention or imply any of that. The worst was how one of the cameras captured a reporter trying to tug at a man’s hands, who was injured and bleeding from the open round of firing from a police jeep that was taken over by the terrorists, so that he could get a better shot of his injuries. No one showed any inclination to take that man to the darned hospital.

Terrorists are sick people to begin with. What is the point in giving them so much media coverage? Creating more terror in people than what already exists? Isn’t that what they want? Shouldn’t they JUST be shot? Why is it so hard?

Media really needs to stick to ‘news’. There was a time I considered Indian news channels to be the best, especially after coming to this country and being introduced to its lousy news channels and coverage. Currently Indian media (most part of it) is doing exactly what I hate the US media for – replacing news with entertainment and drama.

I have purposefully not written about the Mumbai attacks for so long just because I was busy taking everything in and also in a loss for words what to write when so much has already been written across different medias. In the blog world there are a few posts that I thought better than the rest and if interested you can check these out. I have pasted some excerpts from those blogs as well.

Ramesh Srivats
“Commandos are landing on the Nariman Building. They seem to be tip-toeing down. They are communicating to each other through hand signals. Secrecy & surprise are paramount. And NDTV is showing this live!!! With informative commentary on how many commandos have landed and so on. Perhaps NDTV's research has shown that terrorists only watch cartoon network during missions.”

Amit Varma
“Deepak Chopra was also on the show, speculating that the attacks had taken place because terrorists were worried about Barack Obama’s friendly overtures to Muslims. (I know: WTF?) That sounded pretty ridiculous to me, but such theories are a consequence of our tendency as a species to want to give gyan. A media pundit, especially, feels compelled to have a narrative for everything. Everything must be explicable, and television expects instant analysis.”

GreatBong
“Usually an attack of such a magnitude in India is usually given about 30 seconds of TV time on network TV typically before news of Lindsay Lohan going into rehab. But this time, our Jihadi friends have explicitly targeted “Western” peoples thus signaling their intention to be “heard” at the top of the hour.”