![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This article explores the phenomenology of live television through analysing the media coverage of the traumatic event of the Mumbai attacks. Carried out over 3 days, the event garnered global attention as its lurid details were transmitted live into living rooms with television channels seeking to gain viewership by getting the closest shot of the action. The competition for eyeballs compromised the rescue operation as trapped hostages were asked to relay crucial details about their location to reporters through the use of new media technologies. This article uses the theory of witnessing to argue that live television's relentless quest for absolute proximity remains an elusive endeavour in the age of new media technologies. In seeking to get as close as possible to the event, live television changes its very nature and becomes enmeshed in the unfolding of reality. In the case of Mumbai's coverage, this erasure of the split between the viewer and the viewed had fatal consequences for the trapped hostages.
Acknowledgements
This essay remains singularly indebted to the intellect, generosity and mentorship of Dr. John Durham Peters, conversations with whom helped its shaping. I would also like to thank the reviewers at South Asian Culture and History for their helpful comments and especially to Diptosh Majumdar for his insightful analysis of television news in India.
Notes
1. Rao, ‘Its Official, NSG Says Media Got in the Way’; Venkatesan, ‘CJI Attacks Media Coverage of Terror Attacks’; Press Trust of India, ‘Terror Coverage’; and India Abroad New Service (IANS), ‘News Channels Make It a Rule’.
2. Peters, ‘Witnessing’, 720.
3. Marriott, Live Television, 120.
4. Dayan and Katz, Media Events.
5. Katz and Liebes, ‘No More Peace!’.
6. Nacos, ‘Terrorism as Breaking News’; Weimann, ‘Media Events’; Nossek, ‘News Media’.
7. Peters, ‘Witnessing’.
8. This sequence of events is corroborated by the study The Lessons of Mumbai prepared by the Rand Corporation. It can be accessed at www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP249.pdf.
9. Rabasa et al., Lessons of Mumbai.
10. Personal conversations with Diptosh Majumdar, the National Affairs Editor at the news channel CNN–IBN at the time of Mumbai reveal the nature of that competition. Majumdar, Personal Conversation, February 2011.
11. A critique must rely on specific examples, but this study brackets away the task of analysing each network individually and proving that each of them was responsible for the mayhem. The aporia of exemplarity is such that each example is a specific instance and no number of examples can lead us to a universal claim. The task this article takes upon itself is to see those examples as symptoms of larger systemic problems in the media ecosystem at the time of Mumbai. The institution of reforms and regulations post-Mumbai supports the case that systemic problems existed.
12. Roy, ‘Mumbai Was Not Our 9/11’.
13. Sankaran, ‘Hotel Taj’, The Hoot.
14. Ibid.
15. Kesavan, ‘We the People’.
16. Khullar, ‘In India, English-Language TV Stations Face Criticism and Ire’. This prosperity cuts across the linguistic divide of Hindi versus English news networks. Arvind Rajagopal's (1998) prescient analysis of the distinctions between the Hindi and English newspapers concludes that the linguistic divide in the press replicates a social divide where the traditional, religious and vernacular speaking India conflicts with a liberal, urban and secular one. While the linguistic divide in television operates in somewhat similar ways, those distinctions were blurred in the coverage of Mumbai. Contrary to expectations the shrillest, most jingoistic channel was not a Hindi one but Times Now a joint venture between The Times of India and Reuters (Majumdar, 2011).
17. India TV, ‘Terrorists Ring Up India TV’.
19. Datta, ‘Blow-by-Blow Breaking News Breaks Viewer Patience’.
20. That other channel would have embraced the opportunity just as readily is supported by the fact that despite warning India TV, the government had to issue a fresh advisory in February 2010 after another news channel once again aired a live conversation with a militant from Kashmir; Press Trust of India, ‘Don't Give Undue Coverage to Terrorists’.
21. Weimann, ‘Media Events’; Nacos, ‘Terrorism as Breaking News’.
22. Liebes, ‘Television's Disaster Marathons’.
23. Romarheim, ‘Theory of Televised Hostage Takings’.
24. Deshpande and Pande, ‘Three Days of Mumbai Terror Reporting’.
25. This conversation where these details are passed down by handlers to the attackers can be heard here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PSauTty9LA&feature=related.
26. Rao, ‘Its Official, NSG Says Media Got in the Way, Wants Guidelines’.
27. Deshpande and Pande, ‘Three Days of Mumbai Terror Reporting’.
28. Pollack, ‘Heroes at the Taj’.
29. Secrets of the Dead, PBS.
30. Ibid.
31. ‘Deadly Confusion’, The Indian Express.
32. Datta, ‘Blow-by-Blow Breaking News Breaks Viewer Patience’.
33. Deshpande and Pande, ‘Three Days of Mumbai Terror Reporting’.
34. Liebes, ‘Television's Disaster Marathons’.
35. D Zore, ‘After Bullets, Media Terrorises Jadhav’.
36. Marriott, Live Television.
37. Chaudhury, ‘Is Kali a Wimp?’
38. Ibid.
39. Liebes, ‘Television's Disaster Marathons’, 81.
40. Pepper, ‘Indians Condemn Media Coverage of Mumbai Attacks’.
41. Datta, ‘Blow-by-Blow Breaking News Breaks Viewer Patience’.
42. Press Trust of India, ‘Don't Give Undue Coverage to Terrorists’.
43. Dutt, ‘On the Record’.
44. Venkatesan, ‘CJI Attacks Media Coverage of Terror Attacks’.
45. Iyer, ‘Musicians, Citizens Join Vishal Dadlani's Petition’.
46. Press Trust of India, ‘Media May Be Restricted from Live Coverage in Emergency’.
47. Rajya Sabha is India's Upper House. Joshua, ‘Panel Seeks Curbs on Media’.
48. IANS, ‘News Channels Make It a Rule’.
49. These advisories can be accessed at www.nbanewdelhi.com and range from events such as the anniversary of Mumbai to the threat of a pastor in Florida to burn the Koran. Perhaps, the most important such advisory since Mumbai was issued in September 2010 just days before the Indian Supreme Court's judgement on the disputed place of worship in Ayodhya.
50. Choudhury, ‘New Agency to Monitor Media's Terror Coverage’.
51. Dayan and Katz, Media Events.
52. Baudrillard, Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays, 4.
53. Liebes, ‘Television's Disaster Marathons’; Katz and Liebes, ‘No More Peace!’.
54. Katz and Liebes, ‘No More Peace!’, 159.
55. Nossek, ‘News Media’.
56. Liebes, ‘Television's Disaster Marathons’, 83.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., 75.
59. Katz and Liebes, ‘No More Peace!’.
60. Dayan and Katz, Media Events.
61. Weimann, ‘Media Events’.
62. Peters, ‘Witnessing’.
63. Peters, ‘Afterword’.
64. Marriott, Live Television.
65. Peters, ‘Witnessing’.
66. Secrets of the Dead, PBS.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Lindley, Uncertainty, 4.
70. Scannell, ‘What Reality has Misfortune?’
71. Marriott, Live Television.