Why did Indian channels not air the 26/11 documentary?
India¿s TV channels have a reputation for overstatement and hyperbole. The ecstatic coverage recently of Sachin Tendulkar reaching the 17000 run milestone (though India lost the match) further underlines this reputation. And this tendency was given full rein to a little over a year ago, when channels pumping testosterone and high on adrenaline went into overdrive providing non-stop 60 hours live orgasmic coverage of the 26th November Mumbai terror attack. I suspect no other event over the past decade and a half has had as much coverage by Indian media as 26/11.
That is why the media silence that has greeted Dan Reed¿s explosive documentary on 26/11 is curious. The 48 minute documentary titled "Terror in Mumbai - Dispatches" co-produced by Channel 4 and HBO, consists of interviews with victims, actual CCTV videos of the terrorists at various sites, video testimony of the captured terrorist Ajmal Kasab soon after he was nabbed and most chillingly, actual audio intercepts between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan.
It is dynamite. As Irfan Husain, the eminent columnist who saw the documentary said about it in a column in Dawn, the most chilling part was the constant voice contact between the terrorists and their handlers. Talking on cell phones, the controllers urged on their pawns in Punjabi and Urdu, interspersed with the odd English words and phrases.
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All through the atrocity, the handlers ��" obviously watching the drama on TV ��" keep urging their foot soldiers on, encouraging them by descriptions of what they are seeing on TV
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And when the terrorists are clearly exhausted, the controllers urge them on: ¿Throw some grenades, my brother, there's no harm in throwing a few grenades. How hard can it be to throw a grenade? Just pull the pin and throw it. For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed. God is waiting for you in heaven.¿
Given such content, we would have expected that Indian news channels would be vying with each other to ¿exclusively¿ air this video
We would be wrong.
While the documentary was broadcast in the UK in June 2009, in the intervening four months no news channel in India has chosen to do so. Equally curiously, there has not been, to my knowledge, any discussion about this documentary in the news channels.
Why?
One possibility is that as the matter is sub-judice in India, the documentary cannot be shown in India. But this stands negated as HBO have just announced that they will be broadcasting the documentary on November 19th.
So why this silence?
Perhaps it is because the audio intercepts in the documentary inexorably lead us to one inference. That the terrorists and their handlers greatly profited from the live video coverage of the attack by the Indian TV channels. The handlers, possibly in Pakistan were largely able to follow minute by minute, site by site, how their operation was going on in Mumbai, thousands of kilometers away, by merely surfing Indian channels and could direct their charges holed up inside various sites based on what they saw on their TV screen. The media acted as the on site eyes and ears of the handlers and unwittingly helped them attain their goals.
Here for example is a handler directing a terrorist at the Taj Mahal :
Handler: Pile up the carpets and mattresses from the room you have opened, douse them in alcohol and set it alight. Get a couple of floors burning.
Terrorist: Ok
after some time the handlers become impatient
Handler: Start the fire now, nothing is going to happen until you start the fire. When people see the flames they will begin to be afraid.
Terrorist: We are about to. You¿ll be able to watch the fire in a second
Handler: We can¿t watch if there aren¿t any flames. Where are they?
Some time later when some of the sea-facing rooms at the Taj are on fire, the handler, watching the blaze through live coverage, is exultant.
Handler: This is the most important target. The media is covering the target Taj Mahal more than any other
At Chabad House, the Jewish Centre, the handlers watching the still live coverage warn the terrorists when a helicopter arrives.
Handler: Heli aa gayi hai kya (Has a helicopter arrived?)
Terrorist: Yes
Handler:Shoot, shoot
The inference these intercept excerpts suggest is not new. Soon after 26/11 a chorus of voices rose against the media coverage of the massacre. A market survey of opinion about the coverage by Newswatch magazine showed that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed also felt disturbed by the coverage. Over 10,000 people took the online survey. The survey results are not representative of all opinion but unambiguous. Most felt that the news channels had been way over the top, indiscreet, speculative, unquestioning about information they were getting from various sources, and often seemed to be goading the government to go to war with Pakistan. They were theatrical in terms of dramatization of events and use of colorful language, irresponsible in giving away the locations of guests still hiding in the attack sites, were obsessed with elitist institutions like the Taj / Oberoi while ignoring ¿common man¿ sites such as the CST station and the Leopold Café. Those surveyed felt they were intrusive while interviewing hostages, overemphasized the Pakistani angle while the operations were still on, obsessed with ¿exclusive coverage¿ while covering the tragedy and trivialized the issue of terrorism by including celebrities and non-experts in their ¿panels¿. As a thumb rule, the regional language news channels were a lot more hysterical than the English language media. In the blogsphere too there was outrage such as the well written critique by Harini Calamur. Another excellent criticism is by Anjali Deshpande and SK. Pande in The Hoot.
As Deshpande and Pande write (I¿ve masked names of channels and news anchors since this would focus attention on a few channels or anchors when almost all were equally culpable ), Channel A continued showing the operation. It also took us to the scene outside the Trident. There News-anchor, B spoke to the Deputy Chief Minister RR Patil asking him for details. She asked him whether there were any Indians among the hostages. RR Patil said he could not disclose information for it could affect the security of the people held hostage. Patil also pointed out that [showing the] firing from outside could give away the direction from, which security forces were approaching the building. Despite that the channel showed where the commandos were hiding behind pillars!
Channel C reported on November 27, around 6 P M that the terrorists were being given updates by people in other countries who are watching TV! Despite this the live coverage continued uninterrupted and continues even now.
Meanwhile there were also rumbles in the government that if the media would not police itself then the government watchdog National Broadcasting Authority or NBA would.
So unsurprisingly, the heartfelt wish of the media must be to close the chapter on the media coverage of 26/11 and do nothing to redirect attention on their role.
The Dan Reed documentary is thus, for them, the worst of news. It is embarrassing and damaging as it shows all too clearly the link between the media coverage and the actions of the terrorists and their handlers. And it almost casually leaves us with an elephant in the room, viz., the possibility that lives of hostages and members of the armed forces may have been lost or endangered on the altar of the fierce competition between channels for better TRPs and the need for exclusives in the midst of carnage and human tragedy.