Bombay, Responsible Journalism and the “War on Terror”

I did not budge from the television for almost the whole day yesterday. Now I can judge (at least for myself) which channel was providing the ‘best’ coverage. In situations like this, “best” is not necessarily an objective adjective. So, when I think about the ‘best’ news channel coverage of the terrorist attacks on Bombay, I am not necessarily considering who broke the news first. In situations like this, news itself becomes an ambiguous category of speculations, rumours and half-truths. Until Friday evening I really did think that the old experienced horse, NDTV 24x7 had done the best job. They indulged less in the competitive game of “breaking news” and did not report anything until they had some sort of public or anonymous official confirmation. This meant that while they were reporting everything twenty minutes after everybody else, the viewers could also be more confident that what they were seeing as news, was in fact that and not a reporter’s or anybody else’s speculation.

Note, of course, that I said ‘until Friday evening’ NDTV was being a responsible journalist. By Friday evening, only the encounter at Taj was yet ongoing. So, having declared every other encounter as over, the analysis of repercussions began. I have been worried since.

What troubles me is not a jingoistic anti-Pakistan rhetoric. In fact, both the Indian government and the English news channels I was watching were very careful about not equating the Pakistani government with “elements in Pakistan”. What troubles me though is that by creating an “Indian 9/11” analogy, we also think that the only solution to the “Indian 9/11” is an Indian “War on Terror”. I don’t think the use of such analogies is an accident or a coincidence.

Prannoy Roy, the head honcho of NDTV, asked “will the Indian people be ready to sacrifice their personal liberties to be safe?” Americans were asked the same question right after 9/11, and in terror and fear they shelved their doubts and answered a resounding “Yes!” Everybody knows what followed – the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, Guantanamo Bay, violation of personal liberties, a superficial patriotism of lapel pins, and a government that lied to its own people. Is this the “war on terror” we want? Indeed, the hovering uncertainty of one’s life while walking through the local bazaar, commuting by the local trains/buses or eating at a café, is terrifying, but one has to be equally aware of the repercussions of this other kind of fear. It does not necessarily manifest itself in the form of physical violence, but rather sneaks into how a society functions and thinks. We start adding qualifiers to our rights – freedom of speech unless it is to voice doubts, freedom to practice your religion unless you are of a particular faith, right to due process of law unless you are a suspect.

I have been hearing calls for political unity across political parties. This is heartening in a political landscape bitterly polarised due to ongoing elections. But one has to be careful about blurring the differences between politicians and political parties in terms of how they read the current situation and their solutions. One can only hope that we the people will be taken into confidence of the various policy alternatives that are being considered by those in the know-how.