-Yogesh Sharma

 

A national Commando is shaking hands with a state commando. This is possibly a sign of anti terrorist operation getting over. The two commandoes might be old friends shaking hands. This is how a channel described shaking hands of two commandos.
You can see the body of a terrorist tumbling out of a window. There was a slow motion action of the tumbling down re run several times. It was basically a body being thrown out of the window.
Almost every channel talked about the body language of the commandoes with the interpretation that this shows that they are relaxed because the operation seemed to be successful.
These are among the numerous instances which show that what these channels offered to its viewers was a coloured shit. Much more damaging were other cases which are still continuing.
All channels had their quota of misinformation and rumors. Almost all were instrumental in spreading rumor that a terrorist entered the Chatrrapati Shivaji Terminal firing indiscriminately.

On the last day of the tele drama , a senior editor of a channel kept on shouting that NSG had its own limitation, but he vouched that there was one injured terrorist in Taj. This was soon after the press conference of DG of NSG.

Was it not sabotaging the operations just to show oneself smarter than others. Till the date this editor has not been able to produce the injured terrorist on the screen.
On Sunday one channel said that 15 had come, but the state government had accounted for ten only. Using all his histrionic skills the anchor kept on shouting where are these five terrorists? Why government is telling lies? The authority with which channels spread canards is astounding.
On one channel came emotionally chocked voice that there is a very bad news. We cannot help it is a very bad news. After a heavy doze of phrase very bad news, the announcer referred to the reporter who said that none survived in the Tiffin restaurant. All were killed and this would increase the death toll terribly, he further said. Even small children were killed. I do not know what happened ultimately to the Tiffin Tragedy.
It took several hours before the reporters realised that all explosions were not the work of terrorists. In many cases army diffused explosive which caused the sound. This showed that our channels did not have trained team which knew the basics of terrorist operations.
And these persons are not missing any chance, or I should say creating opportunities, to censor authorities, to editorialise their statements.
What was the most disgusting was the way these reporters with their cameramen chasing people coming out of Taj after hours of torturous confinement in the crossfire of the gun battle. They took pride in this. The scene of a man with an infant in arm shooing away Mediamen was shown repeatedly as something great.
There were hundreds of people in hospitals. But there was hardly any coverage about them. All were glued to the scene of action where they could not understand the action and kept on spinning tales with their hair depth knowledge.
The role of the print media was not great, but the fact is that the threat potential of print media is much less as compared the visual media.

This all reminds me of the Tricks Journalists play, a book by Dennis Barker and the title is the Dirty game the channels played!!!.