The Mumbai Attacks, Barkha, NDTV and the media in general

Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of people are cackling and rubbing their hands in glee over these Facebook groups that are lobbying to remove Barkha Dutt from our television sets.

Lots of people have been weighing in, starting with my friend over at Presstalk. Then there’s Barkha’s post on the NDTV website, that also lists other media heavyweights who have come out against the Navy chief’s ill advised press conference:

DNA, Indian Express, Vir Sanghvi in The Hindustan Times, Sankarshan Thakur in The Telegraph

Right, I’ve been trying to figure out what the real problem is here. And I don’t think it’s Barkha or any particular channel.

As a former insider, watching the coverage of the Mumbai blasts was a bittersweet experience. I have to admit there’s a part of me that wanted to be there as well. The part of me that’s still journalistic. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to be there as a television journalist, at least not in the way that television journalists are expected to operate nowadays.

Now let me clarify, I don’t have a problem going asking people how they’re feeling. I see nothing wrong with the question given the context. And I have to agree with Barkha, many people want to be asked that question, they want to share their story.

I think the deeper problem that emerged was the complete lack of ideas on what to do, or say, after the news broke and everybody knew that Mumbai was under attack. All our television channels were reduced to reacting to every sound that emerged from the two hotels.

And that, I’m afraid, just wasn’t good enough. All of us twits (@Dina prefers tweeps) on twitter did a far better job on that front.

You can’t blame the reporter on the spot. Who you need to blame are the completely unimaginative resource managers who control the equipment and information that reporters in the field get.

Let me explain:

You cannot predict when and where a bomb will explode, a terrorist will attack, or an earthquake will strike. But you can plan a response.

Most channels have a response in place, but these plans cover the time imeediately after the news breaks. There is no follow up plan in place, or if there is one it usually just sits there gathering dust, because it doesn’t enable the most precious resource that the channel has — its reporter on the spot. Most of the times, plans are cooked up on the spot. And when things change every minute, there’s a lot that just gets overlooked.

I’ve written about this before, but there are simple things a television channel can do, starting with reducing the amount of time it takes to put video on air.

But there’s a lot of stuff that escapes me, for example why reporters on the field aren’t provided with laptops with working internet connections and the ability to edit video during breaking news situations?

A team of intelligent producers with a handheld camera can work wonders. And feeding information to the reporter on the field should be an institutionalised process, not an afterthought, or limited to a phone call from the boss.

And why is the only information link between the office and the reporter a mobile phone link?

Knowledge Management Solutions are being used by corporates who often face crises that require the sort of response that was expected of the news channels during the attack. That said, it is important to note that the sort of emotion that runs rampant through situations where people are losing lives cannot be compared to a corporate crisis where millions, even billions of dollars are at stake. I don’t know of a single channel that uses any sort of KM in their processes.

In my experience, things are the way they are because that’s the way it’s always been, or at least since the 90’s when private news channels started operating in various avatars.

Channels are crippled by their adherence to processes and their slavery to technology that belongs in a museum.

What I hear most often about technology upgradation is that new, HD cameras have been bought.

Why?

No HD distribution networks exist. And no real value gets added by recording in HD. So, again, why?

I’m going to stop this rant now, I do have work to do

Recovered from the site’s WordPress archive, where it was published on 2008-12-05.