Indian media was itself a major news item as the Mumbai terror attacks came to a conclusion over the weekend.
Coverage of Mumbai terror attacks stirs frenzy
By PATRICK FRATER
Indian media was itself a major news item as the Mumbai terror attacks came to a conclusion over the weekend.
The country’s broadcasters were summoned Friday by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to deal with charges that the live saturation coverage had helped the terrorists. At the same time, however, traditional media were criticized as too slow and inaccurate by legions of “citizen journalists” using Internet services such as Twitter and photo site Flickr.
The deputy commissioner of police argued that the terrorists, who were holed up in two major hotels and became involved in floor-by-floor firefights with police, were gaining tactical information from TV. Using powers under Section 19 of the country’s Cable Television Networks Act, he ordered a blackout of TV news channels.
“Transmission of various clippings/live relay/coverage of the actions being taken by the police against the terrorists in South Mumbai is causing impediment in the police action … thereby endangering the lives of the police personnel as also of the hostages,” the order stated.
Cable and satellite channels went off air for nearly half an hour before the order was rescinded. Media chiefs present at a meeting between the MIB, the Indian Broadcasting Federation and News Broadcasting Assn. hit back by accusing the government information departments and ministerial interfaces of failing to keep up with developments in the media industry.
They said it was unclear which officials had authority to speak to the media, that government and media had never agreed to procedures for coverage of national emergencies, and that the Press Information Bureau is set up to handle print rather than broadcast and online media.
Through blogs, file-sharing and social networking functions on the Internet, dozens of eyewitness reports, some coming from within the two besieged hotels, delivered information faster than conventional media and challenged some of its reporting. Twitter, a user-generated service that delivers text message-sized “tweets,” for instance, reported that there was still gunfire inside the Taj Mahal long after Indian media had said it was finished. Others transcribed lists of casualties from the hospitals faster than mainstream media could access it.
While some hailed the online reporting as “a social media experiment in action,” much of the information on Twitter was woefully inaccurate. Reports of casualties in the thousands were wrong. So too, apparently, was a report that the government had asked Twitter users (aka “tweeters”) to stop reporting for fear that they too might help the attackers.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s media was furious with Indian coverage, too. One paper described Indian broadcasters as being in a “race for propaganda” and making assumptions and unsubstantiated charges about the origins and training of the attackers.
[...]
Still others criticized media coverage as helping create an age of “celebrity terrorism.” “The terrorists’ action must always be complemented by the target’s reaction in order to complete the scene,” security analyst Paul Cornish, chairman of the Chatham House Intl. Security Program, told the BBC. “The terrorists might have assumed, quite correctly as it happens, that the world’s media and the terrorism analysis industry would very quickly fill in any gaps for them.” [...]
Snop's Commentary:
Most telling in this article is the comment by Paul Cornish about media creating the age of "celebrity terrorism".
Cornish grasps the vital organ upon which militant Islamic terror survives-lungs. Deprived of the oxygen that media provides for terror (Margret Thatcher's words not mine) it would sufficate. The effects of terror would never able to move past the local tactical level to the global strategic level that it enjoys today thanks to the artifical lungs of the Internet and Satellite TV .
In this not so brave new world, we have all become victims of the psychological component of mass mediated terror transmitted to our homes, places of work, recreation and into the palms of our very hands.
No government is really prepared to deal with this new phenomenon.
Coverage of Mumbai terror attacks stirs frenzy
By PATRICK FRATER
Indian media was itself a major news item as the Mumbai terror attacks came to a conclusion over the weekend.
The country’s broadcasters were summoned Friday by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to deal with charges that the live saturation coverage had helped the terrorists. At the same time, however, traditional media were criticized as too slow and inaccurate by legions of “citizen journalists” using Internet services such as Twitter and photo site Flickr.
The deputy commissioner of police argued that the terrorists, who were holed up in two major hotels and became involved in floor-by-floor firefights with police, were gaining tactical information from TV. Using powers under Section 19 of the country’s Cable Television Networks Act, he ordered a blackout of TV news channels.
“Transmission of various clippings/live relay/coverage of the actions being taken by the police against the terrorists in South Mumbai is causing impediment in the police action … thereby endangering the lives of the police personnel as also of the hostages,” the order stated.
Cable and satellite channels went off air for nearly half an hour before the order was rescinded. Media chiefs present at a meeting between the MIB, the Indian Broadcasting Federation and News Broadcasting Assn. hit back by accusing the government information departments and ministerial interfaces of failing to keep up with developments in the media industry.
They said it was unclear which officials had authority to speak to the media, that government and media had never agreed to procedures for coverage of national emergencies, and that the Press Information Bureau is set up to handle print rather than broadcast and online media.
Through blogs, file-sharing and social networking functions on the Internet, dozens of eyewitness reports, some coming from within the two besieged hotels, delivered information faster than conventional media and challenged some of its reporting. Twitter, a user-generated service that delivers text message-sized “tweets,” for instance, reported that there was still gunfire inside the Taj Mahal long after Indian media had said it was finished. Others transcribed lists of casualties from the hospitals faster than mainstream media could access it.
While some hailed the online reporting as “a social media experiment in action,” much of the information on Twitter was woefully inaccurate. Reports of casualties in the thousands were wrong. So too, apparently, was a report that the government had asked Twitter users (aka “tweeters”) to stop reporting for fear that they too might help the attackers.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s media was furious with Indian coverage, too. One paper described Indian broadcasters as being in a “race for propaganda” and making assumptions and unsubstantiated charges about the origins and training of the attackers.
[...]
Still others criticized media coverage as helping create an age of “celebrity terrorism.” “The terrorists’ action must always be complemented by the target’s reaction in order to complete the scene,” security analyst Paul Cornish, chairman of the Chatham House Intl. Security Program, told the BBC. “The terrorists might have assumed, quite correctly as it happens, that the world’s media and the terrorism analysis industry would very quickly fill in any gaps for them.” [...]
Snop's Commentary:
Most telling in this article is the comment by Paul Cornish about media creating the age of "celebrity terrorism".
Cornish grasps the vital organ upon which militant Islamic terror survives-lungs. Deprived of the oxygen that media provides for terror (Margret Thatcher's words not mine) it would sufficate. The effects of terror would never able to move past the local tactical level to the global strategic level that it enjoys today thanks to the artifical lungs of the Internet and Satellite TV .
In this not so brave new world, we have all become victims of the psychological component of mass mediated terror transmitted to our homes, places of work, recreation and into the palms of our very hands.
No government is really prepared to deal with this new phenomenon.
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