Media and the Terrorists

Terrorists have let loose war on India and the Media was quick to give blow by blow account of the events in real time.There are several questions raised about terrorism,terrorists,police,the defence services and last but not the least- the politicians, so much so that Shobha De came up with the Slogan "Enough is Enough" and the slogan was quickly grabbed by the media-NDTV,IBN-CNN and the rest.

In my usual style I ask enough of what and for whom. "Enough of terrorists?" or "Enough of politicians?" or "Enough of Celebrities?" or "Enough of tearjerkers?"or "Enough of thinking?"I suspect that there are shades of many enoughs and Shobha De was better off letting it it be under the hood.

That there are several different takes is obvious.The only good thing the
media achieved by holding the various shows ( May be pardoned for the
nomenclature- I am referring to interviews with supposed laypersons,celebrities, the Aam Aadmis, the officials ,politicians celebrities
and all) was to highlight people's anger. But then that can be concluded
without the fuss. The real time reporting was good., But the commentary lack lustre.

I mention a few things that strike me as glaring in the sequence of events
before moving on to the central theme.
1.Police routinely patrol the areas under their jurisdiction? why did it not
realize the gravity of the situation in about a couple of hours?
2.It was a pathetic sight - the chief of ATS getting armed with a little
pistol ,helmet and a jacket. While my personal sympathies are with the brave officer( one of 'us') I wonder what made him take on the AK-47s and grenades with a pistol.
3.Demarcation of roles -Navy and coast guard. We have a long sea coast to
guard and are not equipped-argument only shows lack of will. Why Navy could not have helped while the coast guard was not yet ready? Answer probably would be that nobody asked for help. Whose job is this ?
The Central Theme
It is not enough for the media to highlight anger (I am leaving out the bread and butter reporting out) but they should channelize the people's expertise into creative solutions for common benefit.(I know it might be asking for too much but then the ad's exhort us to demand more.) because I believe that what people should really do is to solve their problems and that is best done by an objective "Problem solving approach" as contrasted with a subjective "Enough is Enough" or do something and fast.

The first thing they could do is to act as a facilitator in a problem solving
process rather than merely as chroniclers of events,sentiments and knee jerk reactions. Shobha De talks of accountability. Is there clarity on who is
accountable for what? Heads must roll- fine provided there are well set rules of the game. A retired police officer on one of the shows was closer when he said that the problem is complex.

The media role would include the following elements

• Problem facts -State of various facts,figures,references related to the problem
• Organizing existing Information into say a fish bone diagram
• Analyzing and chronicling all proposed solutions
• Formulating or reformulating goals/Solution Requirements.

You might say these are beyond the range of Shobha De or Simi Garewal etc but then it wouldn't do any harm to be armed with mental tools. One can also complain this is not my job the experts do it any way.

Answer- Experts at times overlook the obvious and besides there are several different experts ranging from expert on the gulli affairs to expert on international relations.

Before a problem can be solved as best as a group can, the relevant facts have to be available. Interaction of both the laity and the connoisseurs is required and to do that there needs to be a jargon and frame work that the two can share. And like I said different people bring different takes on both the problem and solution. There is no reason to believe that solution building is the monopoly of the babu or the Neta.