Barkha Dutt has written an article defending the media with regard to their coverage of the Bombay attacks. She talks about how a lot of the venom spewed against them is a "convenient transference of responsibility". Then she makes a series of points trying to answer some of the big questions that were asked, which she seems to be doing using the Open World Assumption (OWA) - everything is permitted unless explicitly forbidden!
On the allegation that the media was too close to the site of operation, she has the following defence:
[...] we would have been happy to stand at a distance much further away from the encounter sites, had anyone, anyone at all, asked us to move. In the 72 hours that we stood on reporting duty, not once were we asked to move further away. [...]Similarly, on telecasting live images and information that could compromise the ongoing operation, she says nobody asked them to switch off their cameras. They did so sometimes based on their own assessment; nobody briefed them, no do's and don'ts were provided.
She asserts further that while she welcomes a code of conduct for emergency situations, in the absence of such a code, the media did not break any rules! Such efforts to absolve oneself amaze me. Barkha Dutt and co. have been around for a long while now, have covered several emergency and developing situations, including a war. Sure, the authorities haven't given them a code of conduct. But what about learning from previous mistakes? What about taking the initiative to frame the rules? After all, the media has a stake in such situations. Emergencies are big business. How's that for a "convenient transference of responsibility"?
Perhaps the armed forces and politicians who complimented the media are suddenly changing their tunes, as she suggests. But some of them are also losing their jobs. Had anyone, anyone at all, told Vilasrao Deshmukh that visiting Taj hotel with Ram Gopal Varma is not on, he would still be the CM!
Barkha Dutt clarifies that certain allegations against her during the Kargil war are not true. It's possible that her coverage did not do anything to compromise the Indian army. At the same time, it's not hard to imagine that a real time broadcast of sensitive operational information could do harm. On the one hand, it will definitely increase the viewership by several thousands; on the other, it might compromise just a few lives. It's the responsibility of the media to take the call. And when they keep calling wrongly, it becomes difficult to get convinced that they are doing so out of information asymmetry or stupidity or some such thing.
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6 comments:
It could not be stupidity. It is pathetic the way the reporters assume the audacity to fiddle around with people when they are going through tough times. They should be ashamed of what they did.
Yes of course it is stupidity. Stupid enough to not realize the consequences of what they are doing and to not realize their responsibility.
There are four kinds of games: win-win, win-lose, lose-win and lose-lose. Doing something which is win-win (where we benefit and bring benefit to others) is the only intelligent behaviour.
Win-lose (doing something that will bring us benefit but loss to others) may be "smart" but is stupider than win-win. This is what many in the media and political circles are doing. So malicious behaviour (win-lose actions) are just another form of stupidity.
lose-win may appear selfless and noble and a person involved in a lose-win game may be (rightfully) treated as a martyr. However, if everyone from one side becomes martyrs in a war, guess who has won the war? That is why I am appalled at some comments that I saw on TV where someone says, "I wish everyone in India were to sacrifice their lives in fighting terror." Or the other day on Vividhbharati's "Jai mala" program one commentator is singing praises of our soldiers saying that these are folks who are "willing to die for the country." God! If all our soldiers die, what will happen to the country? The basic duty of a soldier is to *create* martyrs for the enemy and try not to become martyrs themselves.
lose-lose is pure and unadultrated stupidity, like suicide bombing for example. Doing something that brings loss to us and to others as well, is a fine art whose motivations cannot be fathomed by other mere mortals.
I did go through the views presented by Barkha Dutt.
I was wondering, when someone is holding a gun at you. she expects to people to come and say her "hey! please don't cover this. This will give information to the other co-terrorists. Please don't cover this live. Wait! if you want i will get a written approval from the PM of this country. Till then there are no rules, you can cover it live".
Education also needs to imbibe some amount of conscience.
After reading Barkha Dutt's article I am convinced that we humans have no brains to decide for ourselves what is right or wrong, and therefore won't refrain from doing something until warned or threatened. If civilization also follows a curve of ups-n-downs I think we have just crossed the maxima ... its all downhill from here.
surabhi: She claims that they were not fiddling but only talking with the people who *wanted* to talk. It's very difficult to argue about such claims.
sri: I can't see why they don't realize the consequences, specially after having faced grave allegations and warnings in the past. Quite amazing.
Manjunath, Big Foot: Barkha Dutt's article is more like, "There is no way you can implicate me!" There is not much about right and wrong. And everything can be excused by the "this is what people want" line of argument. I am optimistic though that eventually a critical mass of people will reject this, thus forcing the media to change purely for business reasons.
Just in case this goes overboard about passing value judgments about Barkha Dutt or any other media personality, it does good to put oneself into their shoes for a while.
Barkha Dutt and several of the private media heads today have seen quite a bit of the other end of the spectrum, when media and just about any other business was controlled completely by the government. In the 1984 anti-Sikh riots for example, when Delhi was burning, the only TV channel at that time was busy covering Belgian minister's visit and his talks on animal husbandry, etc. Had it not been for some of our relatives who experienced these riots first hand, we would be blissfully unaware of its scale.
There were lots of judgment lapses on the part of private channels, I agree. However, most of us sat glued to the TV switching between NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now, TV9, etc. during those terrible days. The live telecasts, gory they may be, helped sensitize people across the country. Today, there are perhaps only a handful of people in India who do not feel personally upset and angry at these attacks.
Private media has a crucial role to play in democracies. For a large part, they played their roles well. On more than one occasions however, private media too have failed and in fact endangered the lives of hostages and security personnel. Let them be accountable for their follies; but give me free media any day over state-controlled monopolies.
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