“Our journalists battled along with the Commandos and put their lives at as much risk to give the world point-to-point news.” This is what all T.V. channels and news papers have been boasting about related to the Mumbai Attacks. But any person following the media would realize that there were so many loop holes in their reporting.
Today I saw India TV interviewing a man outside Taj Mahal Hotel, who had come there because his wife had gone missing since Wednesday night and she was dining at Taj on the fateful day. The India TV reporter was asking the grieving husband strange questions which no human would ask another… another irritating thing was that journo had the audacity to ask the man such questions over and over again. It sort of went on the following lines (in Hindi)….
Question 1: Are you worried about your wife’s security?
Question 2: Do you think your wife is dead or alive?
Question 3: Do you love your wife?
Question 4: Would you be happy if your wife comes out unharmed?
When I was seeing this telecast I was thinking you freaking MCP think your wife, mom-dad, kids are in the hotel and then think of someone asking such questions. Besides what did he mean by asking do you love your wife… why would a non-loving husband go from hospital to hospital, road to road to find his wife. I mean was this reporter intoxicated…. an asshole
Anyways, besides this there were clear flaws in most of the reporting… initially it was announced that there were 10 terrorists, where as eyewitnesses in Oberoi said there were 10-15 of them. TOI reported that there were 10 in all. If all this was to be believed I don’t know, every 2 hours into the news they’d declare 1 terrorist killed, so in that case there should be at least 30-40 of them. Or should we believe that most of the news gave hoax numbers. Before releasing the news who gives the news channels or anyone the right to speculate? Think about the family members of those captive in the hotels, every time they’d see a report of a terrorist dead their hopes of getting back with their relatives would grow and again and again in these 3 days of terror their hopes were crushed… All this thanks to the irresponsible media.
Rediff mentioned that its information comes from the interrogation of "Abu Ismail," while according to TOI a terrorist named "Ismail" was killed at Girgaum Chowpaty and was never interrogated. To the extent the various news papers reported different names of the vessels that were hijacked to enter Mumbai. How can they goof up this way, I’d say rather wait for few more hours confirm to the fullest extent that the news is 100% reliable and then go ahead and publish it.
We have notoriously bad, TRP hungry and politicized journalism going on in India. Every thing needs to be sensitized and sensational, otherwise it won’t sell. I was seeing BBC, which in comparison although slower than the rest of the news channels it focused solely on the operations and did not disclose any figures on the no. of terrorists or the dead. BBC was any day a more reliable news channel.
In the last 3 days every Mumbaikar was put through a lot... Uncertainty of their personal security, politicians, unreliable media, and every man/woman here thought how unfortunate he or she was to be borne here, to be borne in a country which can not protect it, to be borne in a place where freakos can walk in with armour enough to rage a war. We all can wow by the heroes who died trying to protect us, especially Bharat ke teen anmol ratan, “Kamte, Salaskar and Karkare,” without offense to anyone... our police was so unequipped that these three did not shoot 1 bullet out of their gun and were killed. It was sheer Bad Luck and they without any display of bravery lost their lives. However, they were given so many salutations for their bravery and the remaining 10-11 police constables of lower ranking who also lost their lives fighting for us were not given any recognition in the media. This is what Indian Media is all about.
How can we complain about external terrorists when we have many sitting within our country without armour but with a stronger weapon “audience” and who continuously and successfully lie to us… THE MEDIA.
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