Anyway, another topic of heated dicussion was this No Blog Day. Ok, as a child I have observed 2 minutes of silence, or flags at half-mast during various incidents in the country(AFAIK, its not just for the death of emminent ministers, but to show the we are mourning a great loss). Now did we achieve anything by doing that? Did the country suddenly become stronger after that? Similarly the No Blog Day. I am mourning this tragedy by putting down my pen. People ask whether the terrorists will stop their terror if one stops blogging. Well, are they stopping if you *are* blogging about them?
In fact, come to think of it, these terrorists are driven by how we are reacting. What is the purpose of terrorists? To spread terror among the people. 10 years back, if a gunman shot 10 people in the heart of Mumbai, late at night, the mumbaikars would have got the news over DD/AIR in about an hour and panicked. By the next day morning a small stop-press article would have been printed in the paper and the country would know something bad has happened. Life would have gone on as usual outside Mumbai. That day the news channels would show flash news of the situation and people would have become more cautious. On the second day, a detailed news would come out in the papers and people would start wondering whats happening to India. By the next day, the situation would have been well under control and everyone would feel proud of our commandos, mourn 2 minutes for the loss of lives, and go on with their work.
But what is happening now? Firstly, TV channels sensationalize the news unnecessarily and just cause more fear. But, lets leave that aside and lets see the role of bloggers and twitterers in this situation. Someone hears a sound. For all you know it could be an Autorickshaw misfiring behind you. But immediately someone tweets or blogs about it. Immediately 100s of people start re-tweeting and re-blogging the news. People panic that a situation which was getting in control is suddenly getting worse. News channels get air of this and start calling up so-called ‘citizen journalists’ who repeat what they have heard with a tinge of masala. Time goes on, blogs and tweets fly, fear and confusion prevails until finally someone realizes that it was just a sound and not a gunshot or explosion and then there are loads of blogs and tweets on how that was a mistake.
Now in the past, this news would have never come out. Only the people around that area would have heard this sound, discussed among themselves and by that time realized what actually happened and shut up. But now, there is no time to think. If something happens there is a mad rush to blurt it out before anyone does without trying to accertain what actually happened. Lets say, the TV channels these days sensationalized the false incident. Within the next 30 minutes, when they realize what happened, they take the news off the air. But with blogs, one one does that. False news spreads, false news remains stored on the internet and someone coming in at a later time is fed wrong information and the rumour mill gets active again, before this person reads a newer post 3 pages away and realized that it was a false rumour.
Then someone says that we have to make people aware of the truth by blogging about it. If you had shut up in the first place, you would have fed them wrong information in the first place, and you wouldnt have to then make them aware of the truth. For Gods Sake. Also interesting was how one person felt twitter helped him a lot in getting news as he didnt have access to a TV. If you can go to twitter’s website, you could have as well gone to the tens of reputed news websites – ndtv, cnn, bbc, cnnibn, rediff, indiatimes, reuters, hindu etc. I personally did that and I can vouch that not more than 2 were ever down due to high traffic.
Getting back to the point. The bloggers that are spreading false news. The journalists that sensationalize news. The tweeters that repeatedly tweet and re-tweet the same thing over and over and over again till it burns into the mind of the reader causing panic. This is what is driving terror. This is what is helping terrorists. This is what these anti-elements want. AFAIC, these types of bloggers and journalists are the Terrorists that are helping destabilize India. Whether you would like to hear this or not. A Terror attack is like a project and good project management means you adapt to the situation. By giving news of where the commandos are positioning themselves, where people(read potential hostages) are hiding and which room terrorists have been spotted, you are helping them learn and helping them adapt and become harder to capture. Please do realize that. There are always two sides to a coin.
The best part is that, somewhere in the middle of all this nonsense and *spam*, really good and useful information, like helpline numbers, missing persons list, list of dead and wounded, is lost.
Anyway, good for me that I will be off the internet and I dont have to read this crap and get my BP high. Need this day to relax and think about other things more important in my life. And yes, I believe I will be doing my part in helping the country by just keeping quite.
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One Comment
I totally agree…
What I would like to add is…
I found that all the news channels were showing everything on TV….the place where the army is entering…where they were positioned etc etc…this is not right…
Of course I agree that the media must have freedom….but not at the cost of danger and lives…
If they want to convey it to the people…get the whole story and put the write up after the whole episode is over…atleat one will get complete facts and not parts and pieces of the story.
But doing this…public is just watching and not gaining anythig.
what we are losing is that….like you rightly said…the terrorists are also watching these channels and they are getting informed about all these things.
They kept saying one guy is tuck inside and holding hostages…this guy is already trained to carry out this task…and then media helps him by exactly telling where to go and where not to go.
I feel they dont have common sense…
this is one of the worst things they can do….you cannot help the army people or the civilians…atleast dont make life harder for them.
the channel might be called as one of the best news channels for relaying everything live…but what is the point…they have caused deaths…so I would say they are as good as people hand in hand with the terrorists because they halp them…so they should be put behind bars for helping terrorits