Mukherjee criticises TV channels for Mumbai coverage

Thu, Dec 11 10:03 PM

New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee Thursday criticised TV channels for their 24x7 coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attack, which jeopardised the lives of hostages, and asked them to learn 'where to stop and where to pause' by putting national interests above commercial considerations.

'In our anxiety to beat the other channels in publicity, we were showing some crowds of people on screens. Instructions then came to the terrorists to throw a grenade at the crowds so that they would run away,' Mukherjee said in the Lok Sabha during a dicussion on the Nov 26 attack.

'Some lives were lost because of the anxiety to get publicity. If the camera was not focused there, if the crowd was not found there, perhaps these things would not have happened,' he said.

'So, we have to draw the lesson where to stop and where to pause,' he stressed.

'When they (security forces) were sacrificing their lives, at a safe distance, if somebody thinks that he will defeat his competitors by buying larger viewers by giving updated news, he may serve the interests of the company but surely he or she will not serve the interests to the nation,' Mukherjee said.

With the Mumbai attacks in the backdrop, the government Wednesday decided to set up a coordination committee with broadcasters to ensure a degree of self-regulation to ensure balanced coverage.

In a meeting with broadcasters, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting and External Affairs Anand Sharma told them that their continued coverage was having a negative effect and also affecting tourism and civil aviation.

Sharma said that while the media in the country was free, it should exercise this independence with restraint and responsibility.  source

Annie Philip on Media War in Indan Express blogs

The Indian Express Blogs

War and Peace

Annie Philip
15-09-2006

It's an all out war. Or so we think…The Newspaper Vs Television Vs Internet. After the battle and the bloodshed, will one medium emerge The Winner? Laugh at the death of the other mediums?

Ok a quickie on where one scores over the other…
Breaking News: While enough has been said, heard and written about how pretty much everything qualifies as 'breaking' in TV news, it has to be admitted that Television is indeed king of breaking news. To illustrate, the horror of 9/11 was brought home because of the visuals aired worldwide.
That said, what if there is 'real breaking news' and no visual available immediately? For how long will the newsreader repeat the details of whatever happened?
Step in-The Internet. Or more specifically, the news website. With no pressure of providing visuals, all the details of the news event are there for the netizen to see. And with broadband and streaming videos, news sites can have live visuals, not to forget pictures to go with the story. And for those behind the scenes, no 'chopping off' your article, in other words, no issues with word limit. In many ways, the Internet has the twin advantage of word and visual.
A little confused with the overcrowding details of TV news? Didn't quite catch HOW or WHY something happened? And forget hi-speed broadband, not even a computer in sight?
Trust the newspaper to lay out the WHO, the WHAT, the WHEN, the WHERE, the WHY and quite often the SO WHAT? And all the 'non breaking' but news that matters to you…in the word format. The newspaper, the grand daddy of Indian media. At least in terms of age. Also the lightest medium, in weight that is. And leisure reading. Lazy Sunday reading is newspaper territory.
And if you thought three is a crowd, there is more. Radio and Mobile. Though nothing is on paper yet, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has given the green signal to airing news on private stations, with which, radio will provide news on the go, like it did during the Mumbai floods. And it holds the distinct advantage of being the most 'non intrusive' media as my professor once put it. Great news for the multi-taskers. And with SMS, MMS, mobile news is the new kid on the block.
So while the newspaper and the Internet can weave magic with words, radio and television gets a wider reach since it doesn't require one to be literate.
So then the point? Peaceful coexistence. Underlying the war of the mediums is who grabs the advertisements? All of them actually. Advertising has developed enough to cater to each specific medium.
Illustration again. 'A' reads the newspaper in the morning, tunes into the radio on the way to work, catches up on news at work on the net, receives an SMS on the way back home and listens to the evening TV news.
Ok agreed. Not EVERYONE is going to access all these mediums EVERYDAY. Nor does everyone want to be bombarded with so much news. But almost everyone can be reached through these mediums at some point in the 24 hours of a day.
The future thus should ideally belong to 'peaceful coexistence' (pun intended). Where one fails, the other fills in. Peace, people, not war.


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