During the Mumbai attacks, NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt chose populist reporting over common sense and revealed each and every move of the security forces to counter the terrorists, on live television.
What happened was that the terrorists holed up inside the ‘Taj’ were following all the developments on TV and reacting accordingly.
Later when quizzed on this foolishness of hers, Barkha Dutt said that she and other journalists caught up in the mood of the moment might have committed an error inadvertently.
However, in the recent hostage crisis in Sydney, the ‘Australian’ media showed a lot of maturity in reporting the crisis.
The demands of the terrorist were suffocated from the outset and not widely broadcast thereby not making a hero out of the terrorist and helping to prevent such incidents in future.
In some other ways, too, the Australian media did the socially responsible thing — such as by generally responding to police requests not to breach operational security by broadcasting details of deployments, weapons and tactics.
One news cameraman with an exceptional vantage point provided a constant stream of telescopic footage to the police, while his TV channel agreed to withhold it from public broadcast. Thus, the media despite the intense competition prevalent can and should play a very vital role during such incidents.
Barkha Dutt should learn a thing or two from the Australians!
