A couple of days ago, I was quoted in the Indian Express’ supplement - Mumbai Newsline’s article ‘The Blame-game’ by my friend, Pooja Pillai. I must admit I wasn’t too surprised to find that I was the only one who went against the flow of the entire article.
Indeed, I too, like others, felt that at times, the media was insensitive when it came to the coverage of the attacks. And I don’t even need to mention the names of the ‘culprit’ channels that have ‘sensationalism’ tagged to their hearts. In fact, in the coming weeks, am planning to include ‘media reviews’ as part of my blog’s genre!
Coming back to the point I made in ‘Blame-game’, I honestly feel that quite often media’s (read TV channels’) sensationalism is generalised and thus, they all fall prey to the bashing-game. I was hooked on to CNN-IBN and at times, I was frustrated when the reporters kept saying, “We are unable to divulge too many details as of now as we have been advised against it.” Images and bytes that were taken about half-an-hour before being actually telecast could have made me switch to another channel. But then, these were understandable. The DG of NSG apparently later came out and thanked all the channels for not airing visuals of the operations live “except for one channel”!
Yes, shoving their microphones in the faces of the rescued hostages just as they were coming out insensitive to say the least. It was a race for that exclusive first byte! Ridiculous, I say!
Those who gave genuine coverage to the attacks would have found themselves in the wrong end of the stick and unfortunately for them, both there was only one end to that stick! Had they not covered the attacks in the manner they did, surely flak would have come with idlers like me sitting at home. And now that they did cover the way they wanted it, they gotta be ready to have some mud slung at their face. Well, they would have got it anyways!
Times Now, on the other hand, was very vocal (and you expect that with Arnab Goswami at the helm). Someone ought to remind him that the guests on air need time to answer his essay-length questions! But I thought some of Times Now’s questions were thought-provoking (they always claim to be), while some were plain stupid!
Post-terror attacks, coverage moved around debates on the action or the lack of it from the politicians, funeral of the heroes, visits by the politicians to their homes and their barking comments, which was idiotic to the core. Blame Kerala CM E. S. Achuthaananthan’s doggie remark for that! Exactly the stuff that the folks with microphones were looking for! Having heard E. S’ bytes in the past, I know for sure that his mouth is larger than his brain!
I wasn’t complaining about the coverage till I read Pooja’s article and today’s HT Café’s last page piece on the media coverage. I, do however, stand by what I said. Seems I missed out a lot by avoiding the ‘spicier’ channels! Thank God I did!
