I will not dwell into the seriousness of 26/11 and its implications for that will take away from the point i wish to make here.
An observation that is eating my peace of mind and has hurt me more than the security lapse that caused the disaster.
The media coverage of 26/11...
I'm not making any accusations or conclusions but it would not be absurd to observe that the biggest benefactor of the 26/11 event was the media. For the sensation hungry and competition driven channels, 26/11 was a blessing in disguise. A blessing they grabbed with all the mikes, camera and dramatisation they could possibly garner.
I must be hallucinating but at a point i did feel as if the news reader on certain channels were secretly thrilled everytime a bullet was fired...a life was lost...a commando landed on the roof...or the mob broke barricades hindering the NSG operation.
I could imagine them going a bit gloomy when they announced that the operation was complete and then get suddenly chirpy when there was more firring!!
I'm definately not generalising the entire gamut of media professionals but "Majority Wins" has been a tradition we have been following in all spheres of our life and majority of media today is disgustingly cheap and nasty when it comes to reporting news.
The hunger and restlessness is so palpable that i can sight an incident in my locality in Borivali, national park where a bus that caught fire due to a short circuit was reported on national channels as having blown up in "ANOTHER BLAST AT NATIONAL PARK".
Well....i understand its all about the economic dynamics for how else will you get content to run a 24 hour channel that is competing with more than 50 odd competitors! It makes perfect logical sense for them to behave the way they do...does it not??
Media today has evolved from being a mere medium between the newsmaker and the newsreader to being the newsmaker themselves.
It is the reporter today who not only reports the news but also speculates the reasons behind and the effects ahead of the news...let alone the times when the reporters speculate the news itself!!
I was relieved when at an award function held in Mumbai recently, Mr.Vir Sanghvi a senior journalist and Editorial Director of Hindustan Times commented in his acceptance speech that "Media as an entity has a lot of power and very less responsibility these days and hence it became critical for them to regulate themselves".
As a writer of fiction you tend to get fictional with any and every incident that happens around you and i have been ruminating over a sequence wherein a head honcho of a news channel turns around to face a bunch of ambitious news hungry media men- sitting around with lap tops and brainstorming the channel strategy- and says, "We need to create news where there is none. Go out there and make some news...something big...the uglier, the better." and soon the event has happened and we see the ace news reader almost out of breath, screaming on our faces- "The dreadful has happened...this is the worst....!!!"
What follows is a month long coverage of the event...its causes...its effects...the protests...the signature campaigns...the charity concerst...its victims and ofcourse the victims family who are asked attrocious questions like, "How are you feeling?"...
So you have all the action, drama, emotions, suspense and thrill...the only aspect missing is the end because that is replaced by the start of another catastrophe where the damage may be less but the sensation must be kept the same!
