TELEVISTA
Good show by the media
Amita Malik

Looking back on 2008, one cannot but recognise that it was a difficult year for the media and that, by and large, it acquitted itself well. Mumbai was the acid test, and the debate is still going on about whether the media over-reached itself and might actually have helped the terrorists. As has been pointed out, when terrorists are going about their evil tasks, they hardly have the time to stop and watch TV. Equally, it has been pointed out that many people who were endangered in their hotel rooms either switched off their TV sets completely or cut off the sound to avoid being detected.

It was a year when ordinary citizens were put to risk in different kinds of situations. The media, particularly television, kept them constantly informed about what was going on. — PTI

But while it was important to keep the terrorists guessing about what was going on on different floors, having the TV beyond their reach might have helped to save some lives. It all depends on the instant decisions of those on the spot. There has been a suggestion, totally wrong in my opinion, that the government should put curbs on instant or simultaneous coverage of crisis situations.

Apart from this putting those being targeted at risk, it also puts media persons to the stress of being left behind by rivals, besides leaving them out of the race. It was, therefore, good news that members of the media were thinking of drawing up a sort of code of conduct during crises, which would ensure that their coverage would not be too late to be useful, while at the same time not help those attacking peaceful citizens by giving away vital information about their locations and their intentions.

All this debate really proves that it was a year when ordinary citizens were put to risk in different kinds of situations, and at least the media, particularly television, kept them constantly informed about what was going on. One mentioned the importance of spot decisions. Nothing could have been more life-saving than the decision of the man in the booth at the CST railway station to make use of his microphone to warn passengers about the attack going on and telling them in which directions to escape. He is truly one of the heroes of the Mumbai crisis, and has rightly been highly praised for his presence of mind even when bullets were whizzing past his booth. Here was an ordinary worker doing his bit even when the top police brass was being decimated.

The employees at the two affected hotels carried on fighting valiantly. Some even lost their lives in the process. This is a lasting tribute to their discipline and courage. Channels are really going to town on choosing the man of the year (Women not included?), the sportsperson of the year and so on. It is intriguing that while the choice of Obama is unanimous on the international plane, the rest of the world seems to have chosen Shah Rukh Khan as far as India goes. Even our soft-spoken Prime Minister made a little joke about it.

Shah Rukh has always been non-controversial, cheerful and rightly popular, and all of Aamir Khan’s creativity and recent muscle-flexing have not really helped him get the top slot.

At the risk of being repetitive, I must say that the year-end spectacle of President George Bush dodging the shoes thrown at him, not once but twice, continued to regale world television till the end of the year. The lucky shoe-maker in Turkey who continued to get orders for thousands of shoes from all over the world at least shows that the world has not lost its sense of humour. Which was a good note on which to end a year, which has been unusually grim and sad.