Its that time of the year/month/fortnight or day when our country's top-notch sleuths (occasionally called TV News channels) switch on to Turbo mode. Barely hours after two sets of serial blasts having ripped through the non-metro cities - Bangalore and Ahmedabad, some groups like our media - the electronic one in particular, currency notes wavering association of India (politicians) and (in)security analysts have begun hopping around and doing what they usually do best in these times - move their lips incessantly!
Frustratingly, unbelievable amounts of time and effort goes into the Why, How and Who of the incidents. Does it really matter to the victims whether Gelatin sticks or RDX or Wrigley's bubble gum was used? Or even whether timers or cellphones were used as timers? Security analysts go berserk and flood each and every one-penny, two-penny media agency with the "motives" behind the blasts! Is it such rocket science that the common man can't figure out that the terrorists want to get people to start panicking and turn on one another? Does he need these intellectual scaremongers to tell him anything this obvious? In fact, all these possible stories floated by these analysts of the blasts might easily give terrorists ideas! But this only ONE of the many dissections done, mind you.
At a furious pace, the Toms, Dicks (pun intended) and Harrys in the media start rattling out girlish acronyms like HuJI, SIMI, LeT, JeM within seconds before you can say 'U-s-a-i-n B-o-l-t'. In record time, one is fed "never-before-heard" stories of how "sleeper cells" (an annoying oxymoron) of the LeT/HuJI have co-ordinated with local outfits and planned the whole thing. Journalists jump, infact leap, to conclusions on how the whole plan was hatched WAY before the investigating authorities conclude their findings. That itself (investigations), in our country, happens at such a break-neck speed.
Reports are in that Guiness is contemplating setting up camp in India to study how even the much veneered Scotland Yard has lagged our very own, thoroughbred Policemen in cracking these cases in minutes. And as a matter-of-factly, that same old, verbose, repetitive story is narrated of how the bombers attended training camps in one of our jobless Islamic neighbouring countries and then crossed over and carried out their sinister plans.
And for all this common knowledge, talkshows are organised and expert opinions are sought. TV Channels even exhort people to send them video footage they might have happened to capture at the scene of the incident. These kind of 'Citizen Journalist' campaigns irk me no end. Are they implying that citizens start using their cellphone cameras and zoom in on people bleeding on the streets instead of lending them a helping hand? Footage of the blasts, if captured, ought to be handed over to the Police and no one else. Worse in the middle are the men of straw in our legislature.- babbling hackneyed rhetoric of and yielding no breakthroughs.
Simple question: Would the media would not be better off pressurizing politicians to take action with the same gusto like they (the media) showed in the Jessica Lal case? Isn't it high time we saw tangible results like implementation of stricter laws, improving co-ordination among police and giving them more teeth?
Frustratingly, unbelievable amounts of time and effort goes into the Why, How and Who of the incidents. Does it really matter to the victims whether Gelatin sticks or RDX or Wrigley's bubble gum was used? Or even whether timers or cellphones were used as timers? Security analysts go berserk and flood each and every one-penny, two-penny media agency with the "motives" behind the blasts! Is it such rocket science that the common man can't figure out that the terrorists want to get people to start panicking and turn on one another? Does he need these intellectual scaremongers to tell him anything this obvious? In fact, all these possible stories floated by these analysts of the blasts might easily give terrorists ideas! But this only ONE of the many dissections done, mind you.
At a furious pace, the Toms, Dicks (pun intended) and Harrys in the media start rattling out girlish acronyms like HuJI, SIMI, LeT, JeM within seconds before you can say 'U-s-a-i-n B-o-l-t'. In record time, one is fed "never-before-heard" stories of how "sleeper cells" (an annoying oxymoron) of the LeT/HuJI have co-ordinated with local outfits and planned the whole thing. Journalists jump, infact leap, to conclusions on how the whole plan was hatched WAY before the investigating authorities conclude their findings. That itself (investigations), in our country, happens at such a break-neck speed.
Reports are in that Guiness is contemplating setting up camp in India to study how even the much veneered Scotland Yard has lagged our very own, thoroughbred Policemen in cracking these cases in minutes. And as a matter-of-factly, that same old, verbose, repetitive story is narrated of how the bombers attended training camps in one of our jobless Islamic neighbouring countries and then crossed over and carried out their sinister plans.
And for all this common knowledge, talkshows are organised and expert opinions are sought. TV Channels even exhort people to send them video footage they might have happened to capture at the scene of the incident. These kind of 'Citizen Journalist' campaigns irk me no end. Are they implying that citizens start using their cellphone cameras and zoom in on people bleeding on the streets instead of lending them a helping hand? Footage of the blasts, if captured, ought to be handed over to the Police and no one else. Worse in the middle are the men of straw in our legislature.- babbling hackneyed rhetoric of and yielding no breakthroughs.
Simple question: Would the media would not be better off pressurizing politicians to take action with the same gusto like they (the media) showed in the Jessica Lal case? Isn't it high time we saw tangible results like implementation of stricter laws, improving co-ordination among police and giving them more teeth?
