A few days back, the Mumbai attacks seem to have caught everyone’s attention. Indians in India and world-over had their eyes on it, but soon it caught up with all other countries as well. Sitting out here in San Diego, and having access to no Indian news channel through my cable company, all of us at home were pinned to the webcast on NDTV.com. Initially, as I turned it on for our parents at home (yes, we have family visiting…), I told them that we didn’t have a news channel that would update constantly, assuming that the feed on NDTV’s site, was just an old feed. CNN was still hovering over Obama’s favorite pizza and new pet. After all that disclaimer about the validity of the news, I realized that the news was in fact being aired live. Not only was it being aired live, it was also disclosing exactly what understanding the police had of the situation, what counter-attacks were being planned, and which informant was still inside the hotel. I was ZAPPED! Were they for real? They might as well have aired all that with a personal note for the terrorist groups behind all this.
Where on one hand, these terrorist groups operate with the highest level of anonymity and light-footed movements, here we were trying to counter them after declaring our next moves to them. Did this make any sense at all? All that the common man wanted to see was what was going on, not how many commandos were landing on which roof.
I have seen the media in India get really smart over the last few years, holding people answerable for what they did. This was us seeing them go down the curve. It was like someone smart decided to play stupid. The media can be a strength for anti-terrorist efforts but here they were fighting their own war against the next best news channel. And the one to lose as always was the common man!
Have ethics and sensibility become a choice in today’s working world? Do people consider the consequences of their behavior, or is the universe a chaotic mess of irresponsible actions? Will the media ever realize its inherent power or just keep cribbing about not being given its due respect?