The ghastly nature of the Mumbai blasts last Wednesday evening or for that matter any terrorist strike, are visible to everyone. But the worst part was the way the Indian media displays the gory pictures  of the tragedy.   
This is savage.  Reflecting the enormity of the tragedy of terror strikes  by the severed  heads, burnt bodies and unbearable sight of the injured in pain  has become an obsession with the Indian media, be they  the TV channels or the print media. How does it help victims or their families, viewers or readers, one is unable to make a sense out of  it. 
To put it bluntly, the media  having a passion for bodies, is also a perpetuator of the crime. They are helping terrorists whose objective is to   inject fear into the mind of the people. Terrorists inject  fear at the local level; the places where they strike. Media spreads it across. 
It is not to suggest that media should not cover the  terrorist acts, or expose their designs. But, why multiply the tragedy of the victims and their families and  also to play into the hands of terrorists. It has not happened for the first time. All the time, the media in  India has done it, be it Kashmir or Mumbai. This simply shows that the media, who consider themselves  above all, accountable to none, run  fiction as fact and at times  deliberately distort the stories  just to  be  able to seen on the TV  as someone  who  has done a wonderful job or  to get a byline, are essentially  hollow people. It may not be true of all, but there are many  who fit in this category. 
What happened during 26/11 when the  so  called top reporters,  always seen as shouting into the TV cameras, devoid of facts, believers of rhetoric and  boastful about their contacts, passed on the strategic information about the operation against the terrorists to terrorists  on their TV channels. Their argument is that this is news. If that is the news, then they should be held guilty of aiding and abetting terror  as the terrorists  are. 
And, in this case, no less guilty are  the officials and officers along with the politicians  who, without having any  clue about the incident, the men behind it  or the nature of the attacks, they  are more than willing to give sound bytes and  claim to be fighting against terrorism. 
The men who should have been  looking for the terrorists or strategising as to how to curb this menace are seen more on TV cameras rather than in the strategy sessions. 
Politicians are the worst.  They tend to capture a constituency through TV cameras, as if  this is the last time for them to  say something. On such occasions, politicians should  stay back home  and let the  investigating agencies do their job. But that’s exactly what doesn’t happen.
Another tendency that is often found in the media is that  they  seem to be knowing everything, from where the explosives came, who exploded them and what devices were used. Not only  that they also know that  who did it, when  under the sun only people knowing it are the perpetrators themselves or their handlers. 
Who is a terrorist in India?  No particular profile fits this definition. Instances and investigations have shown that there are  terrorists of all hues. So, unless the  investigators reach some conclusion, that too, with clinching evidence, there should be  no word on it. That would help  investigations and investigators.
If the media wants to stay ahead of the investigators, it must, I stress it must conduct investigations and come out with substantive evidence  to  raise its TRP. Simple interviews of Chief Minister, who is not the  Home Minister, and who sounded as clueless  about the things, as any one else, are not the exclusives. This is routine  or a  very poor way of showing that one can reach   ahead of the government  in the hour of crisis, not for public  good but to flaunt their  contacts. 
When 9/11  happened or for that matter when 7/7 happened, there were no gory pictures. There was only  action. The removal of the debris, and whenever the bodies were recovered, the cameras were not panning on them, and even if they were, those were not being shown the screens of Fox News,. CNN or BBC. It is  not suggest that the Indian media should be  copying Western Media. But what’s   good in  them, we must learn. One is yet to come across any  reporter or reporters  donning the role of shouting brigade on the TV screens. The reporters must have commitment to the facts and bring out the truth. Theatrics may invite  attention for some time, but at some  point those  are derided, because when reporter tends to become an actor, he or she  is simply hollow. These reporters tend to compensate their hollowness with theatrics. 
Terror attacks will take place, so say the senior leaders of our nation, some say we are better than Pakistan, and accidents will also continue to take place, but please don’t show the gory pictures, a mangled rail bogey or the smoke coming out of the terror strike site or the  wail of ambulances  will convey  the tragedy. You just speak but don’t add to our horrors because you love horrors  to substantiate your credentials as a reporter.

Lastupdate on : Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 IST