Terrorised by TV

By Anil Dharker

Sixty hours after the 26/11 trauma began and the last terrorist had been killed, one first heard the phrase “TV terrorism”. Did that mean terror on TV? No, was the common reply. We mean TV terror. Since then the phrase keeps recurring in conversations and there’s now no doubt what it means: there are many viewers who feel that our television channels in their coverage of the horrific attack on Mumbai unleashed their own brand of terror.

The criticism centres on four charges. The first is of elitism. In those 60 hours when television covered the carnage, attention was focused almost exclusively on the Taj and Oberoi hotels with some time given to the commando operations at Nariman House. There was virtually no airtime given to the attacks on Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) or Cama Hospital. Yet the mayhem began there and 54 people were killed. Is that because the dead there were not from the elite? Is that because grieving relatives and friends of those killed are more photogenic when they are fair of skin and well-dressed and their mourning is more restrained?

TV channels may well say that they concentrated on the hotels and Nariman House because they were continuing stories, whereas the incidents at CST and Cama were over within the first few hours of the attacks. But their reluctance to go back to these sites and tell viewers of what happened is an omission that cannot be easily justified. It’s not as if there were no stories there. There were enough human interest angles to be covered, like the chaiwala who risked his life to save people, or the motorman of an incoming train who made people get off on a safer platform, or the startling fact that nearly 40 per cent of the people killed across the city were Muslims.

The second criticism is about TV channels becoming the unwitting tools of the terrorists. During the siege of the Taj almost all channels ran the story that 150 people had taken refuge in its Chambers Club. When they were given the signal to leave they found the terrorists waiting for them; only a few escaped being brutally gunned down. The inference is clear. We, sitting in our homes weren’t the only ones watching television. The terrorists were too.

Then there were the NSG commandos — quite rightly everyone’s heroes. But even heroes are not able to resist the lure of television. There they were sitting in a group in their black cat uniforms as if posing for a passing out photograph, though their faces were covered to mask their identities. Their spokesman though wore a diaphanous black cloth over his face through which you could see his features. But that wasn’t all he revealed.

He spoke of the difficulties of the operation, about the problems of moving around in the hotel in the dark when they didn’t have drawings of the interior layouts. The first rule of battle is that you do not reveal your weaknesses to the enemy. Yet here was the NSG doing just that. Who requested the briefing? Did the channels not see the inherent danger in this exercise?

The third criticism is about the channels’ competitiveness. In a time of national calamity many people say, why was there so much emphasis on airing ‘exclusives’? On the fourth point, there is near-complete unanimity. “Why were the anchors so loud and hysterical? Why couldn’t they be more restrained?” As it happens, there were quite a number of television journalists who were balanced, moderate and tried to be dispassionate. And then there were others who shouted rather than spoke and were emotional to the point of being overwrought. These anchors may have become genuinely overcharged because of the situation but viewers want them to be detached, composed and objective.

I saw first-hand how tireless, persistent and yes, brave, TV journalists and their crew were on the field, quite often laying themselves open to being killed by a stray bullet or sniper fire. Yet, the growing criticism shows that this can be counterproductive. Clearly it’s time for TV networks to introspect.