Mumbali Blasts: Gorey Images on Indian TV

The title of this post should read: 'Mumbai Blasts: Gory Images on Indian TV.' When I typed it I was quite incensed and made those mistakes. If I edit it now, too many links will stop working.

(First seen at Desipundit, originally from Welcome to Your Senses)

I feel so small writing this on my blog. Will it really make any difference? I sincerely doubt. Yesterday night I tried to call a few folks in Mumbai because someone wanted to get in touch with them through Mumbai Help Blog. It was incredibly difficult to get through the numbers. I can only imagine the plight of people who must be trying from all parts of globe to reach someone, only to find the numbers not reachable.

If you turn on the TV it is all over the place. No, I do not mean the news. I mean showing the dead bodies of the blast victims with scant regard for human dignity. I think here is one small issue where we, the people who blog can make a small difference.

I have an appeal for you. If you blog and if you feel strongly about the way Indian news channels (almost all) are beaming the images of the dead, blog about it. If enough number of people do it, someone somewhere has to take notice. We have done it before and if we care about it we can do it again. I am willing to aggregate as many links as possible on this issue along with this post.

Already Mumbai Help has talked about it.

The TV channels are falling over each other trying to show as much gore as possible. Not only does it scare and disgust the viewers, it also robs the dead of the dignity they deserve

News describes the gore.

The CNN-IBN screen was full of blood during the Mumbai blast coverage. Rajdeep was anchoring from one of the bombed first class coaches. He kept on pointing at and showing blood splashed window glasses of the train for a good 10 minutes. As if this was not enough, what followed were blood smeared bodies of injured people. Then there were limbs and other body parts of the dead on the platforms and rail tracks. Blood blood and more blood.

Dhoomketu at 22Floor mentions the TV coverage along with other things.

Thus, it's time to rant about TV. Close ups of the dead bodies, which should be captured and pasted all over Rajdeep Sardesai's house were not the only distasteful sight on TV. Advertisements for houses (Flats at Bhiwadi, Lucknow etc. from Mtech developers, thank you, ...

Sujatha at Blogpourri talks about the smug attitude of CNNIBN.

CNN/IBN cannot get over itself. In the middle of the coverage of the Mumbai blasts, Rajdeep Sardesai could not prevent himself from repeatedly reminding his viewers (and at one point, his reporter as well) that the images were being carried live on CNN world wide. ... Who cares if CNN/IBN's images are being shown all over the world? Oooh, wait a minute. Perhaps he was addressing his advertisers and not the worried viewers who had tuned in to get some useful information.

Prashanth writes.

But, what I don't understand is why on earth these media have to show all those bloodstained photos and videos. Just for the heck of publicity. Just to make a name in the media world.

One appeal in media -- Spread the news, but not through those horror videoclips/photos.

Vethakumar is not happy with Sun TV coverage.

At 10.30pm Singapore time, my daughter switched the channel to Sun TV for the 30-minute news bulletin, hoping to get an even clearer, live and a more involved picture of the blasts. But two minutes were all that the Sun TV news clip devoted to the Mumbai development. Isn't this simply atrocious? To say the least...! So, it was a quick return to BBC for me.

I was back at Sun at 11pm, hoping that they would do away with the usual Sun Music crap to offer live coverage of the breaking news. But instead we had the irritating Singapore import Anandakannan and Sandhya come on air to annoy us with their usual trashy stuff.

Kishore questions the media coverage.

Just imagine being struck with a great tragedy and 10 video cameras standing around you and sending live pictures of your suffering to the world!

Media is in the business of generating revenues. It’s the bottom line which matters. And anything that creates a sensation, sells. Anything that demonstrates a conflict, sells. Anything that gets glorified, sells. Anything that instills a fear, sells. Conflict sells. Peace is boring.

Surya Sharma compares the coverage with 7/7 London blasts.

I also want to highlight the role of media in all this and to be true..it was insane. Can any body tell me what is the logic of showing disintegrated bodies on national channels?

Plz for god sake take some idea from London Blast Tv Coverage. They showed policemen trying to bring life to narmalicy not showing body parts lying around.

Amrit says a leading journalist later apologised

They are tripping over each other trying to show images and small video clips sent to them by what they call the “citizen journalists” and they are in such a hurry to show the pictures that even as known a journalist as Barkha Datt on NDTV “apologized” that they didn’t have enough time to edit the shocking pictures and video clips.

Pooja watches ZEE News in the US and reacts.

I was stunned. They were actually showing dead bodies lying on the track and injured people being dragged to rescue. Even sitting this far from my country, I could not help but feel for everyone back home who were probably seeing these images continuously and how disturbing they must be for everyone.

Emma writes a very balanced post.

However, I also have a grouse against the channels - I feel it is okay to vie with one another for news itself, but the gory pictures shown on television? Is that really required? I can still hear Rajdeep Sardesai screaming out from the TV set in a screeching voice on Tuesday - "These are live images being brought to you exclusively by CNN-IBN, which was the first channel to break the news of the blasts". And the camera would zoom in to show wreckage of the trains involved in the blast, blood splattered on windows and mangled bodies. Yes, it is important to know what happened, it is important to realize that the tragedy was enormous and a lot of people were affected by it; but I also believe it is important that the dead and injured are respected. And showing mutilated bodies especially in close-up shots is not necessarily a way of respecting the dead.

>|' ; '|< writes

They are simply cashing in on the tragedy. They have scant respect for the victims, the dead, and the bereaved. I concede that they seem to be doing a fine job in airing messages for locating missing persons. Other than that, the media seems to have lost insight, and sensitivity. I strongly feel that they should have covered the incident differently.

War for News has the following to say:

Vulture culture, use it or you lose it
Vulture culture, choose it or refuse it...
It's a vulture culture, never lend a loser a hand
It's a vulture culture, living off the fat of the land
...
in the midst of it all, right there at the train wrecks and hospitals, watching our dear television crews jostling for the best shots of corpses, elbowing nurses and overtime staff out of the way so they could get bytes from beings in their last throes. The soft-focus smugness of a cushioned studio tells nothing -- knows nothing -- of the horrors that journalists out there were indulging in.

Musings of a Layman writes though not about the gore but the inane questions asked among other things:

The best question in connection to the bomb blast goes to the drama queen but naturally . She asked the reporter in Khar," How is the mood among the people there" . What kind of question is this? Is this woman on drugs or has she lost her mental balance? . Another gem was when one dumb reporter called Geetanjali was reporting and Barkha said to her," Why don't you get some views from the people standing behind , I see a old man there" Then immediately this Geetanjali babe got hold of this old guy who was loitering around and asked him some really inane questions and when it was revealed that this old guy was passing time roaming around she started fumbling ...

Priya M discusses the pros and cons and mentions the gore.

But on the flip side the reality shown is far more frightening for some than the reality they experience, though it is also far more thrilling for some others. A footage of the blasted station showed gruesome pics of the dead being moved to the moratoriums.

NITK mentions the carnage in the passing.

I remember the news coverage of the 7/7 attacks. There wasn’t footage of gruesome, mutilated bodies like on CNN-IBN yesterday. They allowed their dead some dignity.
A Discussion on India Mike too is happening.

Sujatha has another roundup of blogposts on the same topic.

But when does this coverage cross the line? When does it all become too much? What are the situations in which media channels should exercise restraint and say, "This much and no more?"

Going by the voices in the Indian blogosphere that have made themselves heard over the past three days on this issue, it appears that the Indian television channels did cross the line in their coverage of the Mumbai blasts.

Buchu (link found through Sujatha's blog) says this and then moves on to other things:

ajdeep Sardesai has been shrill and shrieking away, banging on about how CNN-IBN has these exclusive photos or whatever, his voice getting louder, like a child opening new presents as the death toll rises. I know I'm dramatising and the Indian media has improved by leaps and bounds, but I was really quite shocked by how sensationalist the media were being. They were randomly repeating gossip, showing fairly voyeuristic pictures and asking top officials really inane questions. Maybe it's because I'm quite used to the staple staidness of the BBC, but something about the general air of excitement in the media really got my goat today.

Discussion on Indiamike

Images from the BBC: They convey the horror without become macabre.