Media coverage of terror strike: Misleading or justified?

The country hasn't stopped talking about the terror attacks on Mumbai that started on November 26 and ended two- and a half- days later. Bringing the terror home and tracking the aftermath were the TV news channels. Not surprising AMAP ratings show that the ratings and the time spent on news channels shot up radically as the terror unfolded. But did Indian broadcast journalism touch new highs or new lows? What are the challenges the situation threw up for broadcasters.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive discussion with G Krishnan, CEO of the TV Today Group and President of the News Broadcasters Association; Meenakshi Madhvani, Managing Director of Spatial Access; Phil Smith, Editor, South Asia for Reuters; and Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief of the IBN Group of news channels on CNBC-TV18.

Q: When I asked you what you thought of the television coverage you saw of the attacks on Mumbai––you used the word appalling. Was that braced on the fact that you felt, like a lot of people feel, that the security of the rescue operations of both the commandos and the hostages trapped inside was endangered by the coverage that you saw?

Madhvani: I used the term appalling because of three reasons. First, the whole operation was compromised quite significantly, and frankly, I could not understand why it dragged on the way it did. In my opinion, the fact that the media was covering every second of it and feeding information to the terrorists who were inside helped them actually draw out the whole process. Second, the insensitivity with which the whole event––everybody keeps talking about it as an event––it is not an event, it was an incident. There were breathless announcers; people in studios were sort of whipping up frenzy among audiences; and the third thing is the fact that the same clippings and footage were shown over and over again.

Q: Let’s in this segment stick with the security-being-endangered-charge against media. Do you think that coverage endangered the commandos as well as the guests who were inside?

Sardesai: There is no evidence to that effect. At the end of the day, one has got to go by evidence. I don’t think any of the channels had any access to operational details and if it was seen to be some sensitive information, then the government shouldn’t part with it. The government can easily control information in such a situation. Have a press conference at 11 am. Have a press conference at 6 pm as it has done across the world as it is done with medical bulletins and keep the television cameras out of the way if you feel that they are compromising security. The point is––Meenakshi makes a point ––the lives were endangered. I think that’s a serious charge. However, that serious charge then has to be backed by evidence.

Here’s what the former Mumbai Police Commissioner, MN Singh, though he didn't want to be overcritical of the media had to say, "Today, only somebody was telling me that some people staying at the Taj Hotel were led into the chambers in the Taj for safety reasons and this was somehow given to the media or it came to the knowledge of the media and the media reported it immediately. That some people have been brought to the safety of the chambers and many people were killed. The terrorist came to know because they were watching the television. This was told me by a responsible person so I take it that It was not a false thing. But if this has happened, I would call it very tragic."

Q: There is no evidence. MN Singh also says that we’ve had the Naval Chief say that media was disabling the operation. We, as viewers, when we watch the coverage, we heard reporters describe the exact number of commandos going in even if they were basing it on their observation and not information that was official. We saw live footage of chopper on top of Nariman House. The question to you is while there was no flow of official information, periodic information and that is a constraint––I grant you that––is there some discretion that editors should have applied?

Sardesai: Sure. There should be restraint. The operative word I would say is restraint. Any incident of this nature, of this magnitude, of the sensitivity–it requires that kind of vast courage, extensive coverage but it needs to be done with sensitivity and restraint. There will be good journalism and not so good journalism. My problem at the moment is that it is almost as if blanket statements are being made.

Q: We are trying to review because everybody involved, from citizens to the government, we are doing the media introspection here because the media is not above that?

Sardesai: So the point that MN Singh makes about the chambers is something to be looked at but again it comes back to government information systems. The government should be the one providing the kind of information and then the second filter is the editorial table, and we could recognize the limits and the strengths of live television which governments of the country are simply not able to recognize.

Q: How do you react from the fact that the media doesn’t need to describe everything that it sees? We saw visuals of sniper positions on the Gateway of India, we saw the airdrop, etc.?

Smith: The air drop is a very difficult thing to keep quiet. Sniper positions you can keep quiet, you can keep the press further back. What struck me about this operation is the siege of the Taj was that the journalists would stand within a 100 meters of the hotel, a couple of them were injured due to the flying glass because of the grenade went off. My guys all had flak jackets because we work in hostile environments, the local media here isn’t geared up for that thing and they shouldn’t allowed to be too close.

Q: Would you say that as a management, even though the security cordon allowed you to go so close to the hotel, for the safety of your staff would you advice them to use their discursion and be further away? Is that purely an editorial call?

Krishnan: I do agree that we need to take precautions to ensure that the staff is safe. We are not responsible for how close we can go and how far we can stay away from. That’s a decision of the local government should have put a barricade to ensure that people are away from the place as they knew what the situation was inside. We didn’t know and we were only reporting it from the outside. So we didn’t even know when the incident happened. We were told that it was a gang war and then later it turned into a terrorist attack. Thus, please realize that the mechanism in which we work we would never understand why the situation is. So how do you deal with a situation like this? There needs to be a mechanism in that place so should be crisis management system. Brief of media, because the Indian media is very vibrant, and let me also tell you that if this media reporting wasn’t happening. Then let me make it very clear that you would have had riots across the country and is the government appreciating the media. I don’t think they are, but they are just busy doing a post mortem of us now and why are they so critical about us?

Q: You cannot dispute the fact that the media can be scrutinized, that the media scrutinizes everybody and everything else. You accept that don’t you?

Krishnan: We are willing to scrutinize ourselves. This situation has never happened before. A hotel being taken by terrorists and hostesses being taken is unheard of, and it has never happened in any part of the world, and this has happened for the first time. So, when media is actively reporting the matter nobody knows, what’s in the inside and nobody is giving the information, and yet we are trying to ensure the reporting is as factual as possible depending on information that was coming to us.

Q: What’s the key lesson on the security front?

Sardesai: It is not ball-by-ball commentary that’s the lesson for us and that’s the constraint of a 24x7 channel. It’s a giant beast that you are constantly feeding; however, we have to learn that you can’t do ball-by-ball commentary but the government has the bigger lesson. Don’t shoot the messenger and find out what you can do to handle the media better, there is no media management and we are in the media and information age.

We are reviewing the live TV coverage of one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in India's history. The question is how credible can live news coverage be in the kind of situation that we saw develop from night of November 26. There's lot of different criticism––here's one view.

Juned Shaikh, Research Scholar, said, "Not only did they make a spectacle, journalists wanted to play a starring role in this and it was really shocking with senior journalists on some of the best television channels who have been trained in some very good places and when they play such a role then it is a real problem."

Sardesai: There is about 62 or more hours of coverage. If one looks at just the event and its aftermath, that’s a lot of software. So, there wil be some scene as hysterical or over the top, that is seen as legitimate criticism anyone in the media should be opened to scrutiny. As you put it, and I can speak for myself and my channel at this moment, one of the messages is to please be composed and don’t become the story. Indian journalists have to start recognizing that and it’s a global practice. The real tragedies of all those who are losing their lives or their family members are locked in. It is their story and it is a huge story, but don’t make it your story. There needs to be more training and better filtration, all accepted. However, at the end of the day, if one looks at the overall media, we did some things very well and we did some things not so well.

Q: In a situation where information is not coming in and you has a competitive environment the information you are putting out and with speed getting it out first?

Smith: For us, as a global agency, it’s perhaps a little easier because we are not chasing ratings. So accuracy for us, by far, is in a way the most important thing. Speed comes second. So we do sit back and we are behind the curb sometimes because we go with official numbers.

Sardesai: We need to look at speed versus accuracy at such an event.  I myself would be terribly apologetic about the fact that we flashed on air that there was firing on the second day at RBI and again at CST. I apologized four times but it is not enough. It was not the only channel which did it, that in such situations accuracy, credibility matters more than speed we will be better-off next time around.

Smith: When we got that rumour, when it was running around, we didn’t run with it because we couldn’t collaborate it. However, we were not under the same pressure as other young journalists were and there were some very young people at the Taj. They were trying to build a career as this is the big one for them. So, they were trying their best because they were looking to build a career.

Q: Did you, at some point, feel compelled beyond just television because there wasn’t that much because of very young reporter’s maybe?

Madhvani: Phil talked about very young reporters. They made it out like almost a tamasha, I wouldn’t mention any names. I feel senior people are to be blamed far more than the juniors were. The newspapers did a fantastic job of coverage. The compulsions were not the same, they obviously don’t get the story out in three seconds.

Sardesai: This is becoming more of a television versus the newspapers because the newspaper people don’t know the constraints in which the television works.

Q: What are the pressures you see editorial staff face when it comes to ratings? We had economic times run a report as to which channel had scored the highest ratings?

Krishnan: By this particular instance, any person will look ever for a rating. If you think we ran after rating it is very wrong and I don’t think that’s the way we look at it.

Q: We see channels put out promos and ads immediately with ratings etc.

Krishnan: I can only talk about our channel and we haven’t done that. The purpose was to see what was happening on the ground to deal with that situation at this point in time because as much as people’s life were being endangered we understand our own staff is sitting there and getting the story up there. That was not the objective but it was to get the story up on air.

Q: So you mean competitive pressures have no role to play?

Krishnan: Not at all because this is not breaking news, because all what we were reporting was what was there at that time and it is not that there were four situations happening at the same time. There are only 2–3 locations which we were reporting from. We are only dealing with that, but please understand, people have kept saying that news channels have endangered the security of people’s life. Did we ask them tell us whether 200 NSG commandos were to go into Oberoi Trident, Taj and Nariman House? We didn’t ask them, they gave the information to us.

Sardesai: We had a situation where it seemed like people were competing with each other to give information while the operation was on. When we get the inside information on that from some commanders, we assume that it is precise because it is coming from someone who is in the public domain. The problem is that we need to put our entire system through some kind of media management training. We need to have chief ministers, ministers, etc. who need to go through media management training first.

Q: Do competitor pressures get in the way of old fashioned journalism of the way things are and it doesn’t matter what the exclusive is, tell us as an editor?

Sardesai: Not so much in a story like this. In this story, everybody has more or less the same pictures. It is very difficult in this story to get that breaking news or exclusive.

Q: So why did we see so many press conferences, like when the NSG Chief came out to address the media; it was almost a circus?

Sardesai:  That was bad journalism.

Q: Even the Mumbai Police Commissioner’s first press conference, which was in his office, we saw the same circus and we couldn’t hear him.

Sardesai: We have 100 news channels in this country and we have a 20x20 room to have a press conference. Why can’t the police have an official briefing room with someone who is trained in such situation to provide the briefing. And there are no competitive pressures but pressures to get information

Vishal Dadlani, Music Composer, said, "We are going to take this petition to court. We are going to mail it to them first and hope that they take cognizance of it and if not then, we file it in the normal channels. The hope is that the court will direct an authority to issue a code of conduct, which, if the press decides to contravene, it should be legally actionable."

Q: He has about 19,000 signatures and he has a petition that he wants a code of conduct for the media, especially, in situations like this. As a news broadcaster’s association’s President, what is it that you are reviewing after this incident?

Krishnan: There are lots of good that we have done. We may have had some marginal errors that need to be looked into and which surely we are quite happy to look into.

Q: Any areas which you can see the association needs to tackle immediately?

Krishnan: I would not be able to comment on this right now because this has just happened a week ago and we are assessing the situation and trying to see what we should do. We would put a self regulation mechanism in place and if we can do that in the last six months, I am sure we will find a matured way of dealing with this, if it were to happen again.

Q: if you don’t do it then you will have situations like you did when on Friday the police directed cable operators to turn off news broadcasting, and that is completely not acceptable to anyone. So how do you prevent those situations from happening by exercising restrain and be ensuring that there is self regulation?

Sardesai: That’s happening. Even today, an advisory has been issued about footage not being used about the incident. There were politicians who called me and said you cannot show public protests at the Gateway of India. The bottom line, at the end of the day is, to not to shoot the messenger. The attacks have not happened because of the media. All those who want to set up this public interest dedication need to recognizes that––please don’t shoot the messenger. This happened during the Khandhar incident––they said it was media pressure that released the hijackers. That’s a government decision, no one wants that but somewhere a code of conduct is in place it maybe needs to be strengthened but let the media do it.

Q: Are news channels are united in following a code of conduct?

Sardesai: That’s always going to be a tricky question in the business that we are in, but we all are concerned. However, the media does have a conscience, the level of ethics may vary from one individual to the other but there is an ethical core. Let us stop making this as an aftermath of the problem that has happened and what worries me is about the print journalists.

Madhvani: Nobody blamed the media. You are trying to take on too much of responsibility.

Q: There is a view that forgets all this, and let viewers decide it’s a free market. If you don’t like our coverage then tune out but is that applicable to journalism or should it be the rule different where journalism is concerned and the market is concerned?

Smith: If you don’t like then you could watch BBC world which was giving very reasoned, non-hysterical facts and balance-based view of the situations. So, if you wanted that story you watch BBC World because that’s the way they have always operated. I do think it comes back to, one can say maturity, there are a lot of new organizations and they are fighting for exclusives and there weren’t that many exclusives, and if any at all. So they were pushing the envelope saying the next time this will look different and the media will be kept further back, saying you don’t have to comprise the security of the situation. Hopefully, his authorities will get a bit more geared-up and to get more media-wise. The media will themselves train people, and a code of conduct, but you come to ethical dilemmas that is down to individual reporting.

Q: Do advertisers care about ethics when it comes to the rating came out, saying okay so and so channel got the highest ratings so we are putting our money here?

Madhvani: We did a research after the NIthari killings and we found that 30% of advertisers were concerned, and said that they wouldn’t advertise on channels that sensationalized news and then blew it out of proportion. While 70% didn’t have any problems as they were chasing the ratings. Today, I am pretty confident that if we did that research we would find a change because today what’s happened is this––it is such a public outcry and no advertiser wants to buck his consumers if the consumers are telling him don’t go there then advertisers are not going to go there. So, to that extent it is sheer force of conviction with which people are reacting to the whole situation not so much in terms of the media having covered it that badly, but just the fact that this has been landmark turning point in the life of India and because of this, more and more advertisers, I hope, are going to start understanding that editorial environments actually do have a role to play. It is not just eye balls and ratings that they should be looking for.

Q: Some key lessons that you think personally, because you were out there on the field leading a team of channels.

Sardesai: Restrained, responsibility and maturity––the Indian media with time will become more mature and I could no longer say we are just ten year olds and so we are allowed to be immature. No, I don’t think that’s an excuse. We have to be mature; we can channelize public anger into concrete action and we have to somewhere down the line do what is called Atmachintan and every does that and we want the politicians to introspect and we should also introspect.

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