Indian media and the ethics of terrorism coverage

Vir Sanghvi, one of the few media superstars to be born out of an Indian newspaper, has a column in today's HT on the anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks. A lot of people outside of India don't know how closely the Indian media was criticized for its coverage. As a long time industry insider, Sanghvi tackles the criticism point by point. He takes some hits, he dodges others.

India is a unique environment for journalists. We have as many news channels and as much media coverage as any other country (more than most!) but none of the regulation or infrastructure.

The result, of course, is the weird mashup of poor ethics and striving that marks so many Indian industries in this time of growth. In the absence of government oversight, it falls on all of us to regulate ourselves, with mixed results. Most of the major players have a dark side, whether it's breaking journalistic embargoes, making up quotes or fabricating entire stories. (The lead article in today's TOI is a prime example of writerly sleight-of-hand. "Cost of keeping Kasab alive: Rs 31 crore and counting" says the headline. Later on the author says that this cost estimate is "unofficial" because the government won't disclose the real amount. But nowhere does the author tell us where the 31 crore number actually comes from.)

"Whose fault was it that TV served as an impediment in fighting the terrorists?" Sanghvi asks in his column. He tries to say that it's the government's fault, because there was no central news distribution network. It's convenient to blame Indian media's ethical failures on the inadequate Indian government. Hell, we Indians are pros at hiding behind the failures of the state. Sanghvi tries to make it sound as if Indian TV simply didn't know that their coverage was endangering lives, and it was the government's job to tell them.

Eh? Perhaps this is true when it comes to highly classified state secrets, or the recipe for manufacturing nuclear bombs (incidentally, widely available.) But in this case, it just doesn't make sense. How could a news channel not have known that filming a live government rescue operation might endanger hostages? How?

I remember when FOX News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, embedded in Afghanistan, claimed on air that he was "packing heat." Journalists - not the government - leapt all over Rivera for making a dangerous and unethical statement, one that could endanger the lives of all American civilians in warzones. In my journalism class, we discussed Rivera's slip ad nauseum. Why? Not because we liked to poke fun at FOX News (ok, not entirely) but because our professors wanted to drill it into us that as journalists we often act alone, and it is up to us (and not the government or our editors) to ask ourselves whether the information we're disclosing puts lives at risk.

And why did our professors need to drub us so thoroughly with this lesson? Because they had all been working journalists. They knew that the moment we left our j-school's hallowed gates, we'd be caught up in a crazed media cycle with little respect for integrity and even less for truth. Because they knew that if we didn't make it a habit to ask those questions when we had the luxury of time, we would never find the time to learn to do so later.

Indian journalism - particularly TV - is coming up almost overnight. As journalists we have to ask ourselves ethical questions all the time. Sure, Sanghvi pays lip service to this necessity, but his bottom line is "governments never learn."

As a journalist in India, I've seen firsthand the culture of shoot first, ask later. Are there ethical journalists? Of course. But even if the government information network had functioned perfectly in Mumbai, I am not sure Indian media would have respected government dictates. We don't have that culture. Our news cycle turns over every 20 minutes. There's almost nothing it can't forgive.

Sanghvi is right. People are always willing to excuse the government, to say "well, the government didn't know." This, too, is a faulty assumption. George W Bush banked on it when he started the war in Iraq, history has relied on it to excuse world inaction not just in the case of the Jewish Holocaust but in the case of every holocaust before and since. Yes, the government knew. No, they didn't do anything.

So now what? It's easy and tempting to say that Indian media have learned their lesson. Maybe we have. (If only moderately) But the lesson doesn't just apply to terror attacks. It applies to all aspects of news coverage. We shouldn't turn into ethical philosophers the moment a fundamentalist sails into a national landmark. As the Mumbai episode shows us, by then it will already be too late.