Eating is an agricultural act - Wendell Berry

Thursday, November 27, 2008

ashamed...

...of our media for their drivel and sensationalist 'breaking news' approach. one of the NDTV reporters says, "The whole area has been securitised....". Times Now constantly harping, "Exclusive pictures only from TOI and only on Times Now..."

...of our intelligence bureau

...of our security forces - 21 hours and counting...no resolution. the most tragic image was a tired and struggling fireman trying to aim his hose into a 3rd floor fire at the TAJ with no water pressure.

...of the trolls that spew venom on the message boards.

...of our non-existent emergency response systems.

...of the ATS to have allowed their top officers to enter into the battlefield with inadequate preparation and gear with disastrous effect.

...of manmohan singh, who has single-handedly made george bush look efficient and decisive.

7 comments:

Purvs said...

Manmohan Singh's "message" could have been better read by a five year old. It was completely void of emotion and quite irrelevant.Made me more angry than anything I've seen on TV in the last 24 hours.

I cannot agree about the security forces. They are not on an open battleground. They do not know how many civilians are inside the maze-like hotel. If there is collateral damage, they will be in the line of fire from the same media and citizens who are right now upset over how much time they are taking.

While on the one hand I agree with you about the media, that they almost seem ecstatic at what this event has done for their ratings (I , too have been watching Times Now), I also wonder what it would have been like if there was no media to keep us updated. In fact for once, I feel like they have shown some restraint (perhaps by force or due to lack of information) and edited out sensitive information that could affect on-going operations. It was driving me CRAZY this morning when they kept showing videos of every nook and corner where security forces were stationed. That was really idiotic.

Aniket said...

I am quite in agreement with purvi on the security forces wala issue. I have been trying to defend their 'delay' single handedly among all my frnds and relatives !! Of course they can surely do with more sophisticated weaponry though ...

Abt the media .. i completely agree with Sriram -- for me it's absolute senseless sensationalism. I hadnt watched news till today eve, was following it online...and was shocked when i actually did see. Nearly every channel had this "Breaking" news -- "Another blast at Taj" ..but none even had the courtesy to inform the time. It later turned out to be a rerun of the news which happened in morn.

Vanessa said...

I was watching IBN7 hindi news. The reporter at the Taj was saying something like, the army is here, but are not having much success due to the hostage situation. Now they are planning a surprise attack from the back door .....WTF....
If not us, i am sure terrorists were thankful to the media for the updates.

csm said...

i understand that the security forces were delayed by the tortoised politicians and babus.

but i hold my stance on the obvious lack of quality of our security forces.

there are of course issues like command chain in emergency situations. while it is good to see that the army, navy, NSG, police involved, i think without a clear leader (may be due to Karkare's death), the aggregation of all these forces did not seem to make much difference.

the debate is now over the delay in getting the NSG (they were apparently transported by BEST buses).

the media's present 24X7 avtaar is viciously destroying quality and editorial sense. i dont really see why the aam-junta should need to have a minute by minute updates on the developments. am sure that majority of us shut of the telly several times through the day. we are hungry for news but we also avoid over-eating.

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

csm
if they say Spirit of Mumbai i am going to totally lose it.
it seems to make more sense to use Facebook as a reliable source of information than the news channels.

Serious Lounger said...

kewl, i would agree with purvi and aniket on the statement of the security forces - i think they have done a damnably good job for the situation and am quite impressed with the way the whole thing has been handled in terms of ensuring that the NSG and the Army got involved early enough - utilising the best resources available with us to beat them mfs. Wouldnt beat the security forces with a stick - they have managed quite well to localise the terrorists to 4 locations, when it could have been 10 more. they have shown immense patience in planning and implementing cleanup operations. I dont think a SWAT team would have done any better and most hostage like situations in populated areas tend to be drawn out events - note the iran emabassy thing in london in 1980 in which the SAS took part in took 6 days to clear out - and that was just one building.. here we have four buildings, i dont blame the security forces..

The media is another story - i sometimes wish someone will arrest barkha dutt for her utterances and clamp down on the media during situations like these.. as a friend of mine said, the best news seems to be coming from DD..

csm said...

sl - too much CSI, 24, Bones, arnie have given us a skewed notion of counter-terror operations.