Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The 26/11 mania!

There’s so much talk about 26/11 – have we changed as a nation after a year? How prepared are we to face another such attack? – many more such questions are hurled at us by the media - especially by the electronic media. Many channels are working overtime, interviewing students and working professionals- in other words gearing up for the D-day 26th November. The way it is done one gets an impression of celebrating a festival that one has been eagerly looking forward to. Some have started rerunning all the available footage of the fateful day in their prime time programmes with eminent panelists analyzing the sequences threadbare. In all these attempts to replay in our minds the horrendous scenes of that day there seems a vulgar motive. Is the media trying to inform and educate the public so as to help us become more alert, more vigilant? Is the media suggesting to the government concrete measures to avoid or tackle such problems in future? Ideally, after all that had happened one would wish it were so – that our media, the fourth estate would act more responsibly instead of resorting to rhetoric and gimmicks almost amounting to vulgarity. But, unfortunately it is the same old story being played again and again. And mind you, tomorrow the 26th is going to be worse…from morning to night our media is going to feed us on this sickening diet all the time hoping for another such story that would give them yet another 62 hours of non-stop sensationalism. Justice Liberhan’s recommendations for the working of the media are quite relevant in this context. How is the media to be held responsible and accountable? What measures are in place to deal with irresponsible people (Liberhan’s choice of expression for this is yellow journalism) in the field of media? Will the media respond positively to the suggestions made or will it a turn a blind eye to them and continue to live in their ivory tower assuming that all is well with them?

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