B.RAMAN
I have been in receipt of feed-back from some of my
friends, Tweeter followers and readers raising certain questions in the wake of
the judgement delivered by the Supreme Court on August 29,2012, dismissing the
appeal of Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani accused in the 26/11 terrorist strikes,
against the death sentence passed against him. The judgement has confirmed the
death sentence as justified and warranted.
2. The first set of questions relates to how soon
the death sentence will be carried out. There are legal and administrative
procedures to be followed before the sentence is executed. I would not like to
comment on them.
3. The second set of questions relates to what is
seen by many Netizens as an attempted cover-up by our private TV channels of
the very critical observations made by the court as an obiter regarding the
live coverage of the 26/11 strikes by our private channels.
4. As pointed out by me in an earlier article, the
devastatingly critical observations made by the court relate to the Indian
private channels AS A WHOLE and not to any particular channel. It is important
to keep this in view so that one doesn’t go on a witch-hunt.
5. Having said that, I have to underline that in my
over 20 years of experience in dealing with and analysing terrorism I have not
come across any instance anywhere in the world where the judiciary has on its
own come out with such a devastating criticism of the role of the TV media in
live coverage of acts of terrorism.
6. I do not have as yet access to an authenticated
copy of the observations of the court relating to the role of the media. The extracts cited
by me below have been taken from some web sites believed to be accurate.
7. The Supreme Court, inter alia, said:
“405. Any attempt to justify the conduct of the TV
channels by citing the right to freedom of speech and expression would be
totally wrong and unacceptable in such a situation. The freedom of expression,
like all other freedoms under Article 19, is subject to reasonable
restrictions. An action tending to violate another person’s right to life
guaranteed under Article 21 or putting the national security in jeopardy can
never be justified by taking the plea of freedom of speech and expression.
“406. The shots and visuals that were shown live by
the TV channels could have also been shown after all the terrorists were
neutralized and the security operations were over. But, in that case the TV
programmes would not have had the same shrill, scintillating and chilling
effect and would not have shot up the TRP ratings of the channels. It must,
therefore, be held that by covering live the terrorists attack on Mumbai in the
way it was done, the Indian TV channels were not serving any national interest or social cause. On the contrary
they were acting in their own commercial interests putting the national
security in jeopardy.
“407. It is in such extreme cases that the
credibility of an institution is tested. The coverage of the Mumbai terror
attack by the mainstream electronic media has done much harm to the argument
that any regulatory mechanism for the media must only come from within.”
---Citation ends
8. The Supreme Court’s observations, in my view,
are of such far-reaching significance in the history of terrorism in India that
one would have expected that this would be one of the main themes of the
various TV debates that one saw on the night of August 29. I did not see all
the TV debates and, as such, am not in a position to make any authoritative
comments on this. However, many of the feed-back received by me allege that
there was an attempt by the TV channels to cover up or play down this
significant aspect of the judgement.
9. The reputation and credibility of our TV
channels has already taken a beating as a result of the critical observations
of the Supreme Court. Their credibility
would be further weakened if the general impression of a cover-up by the TV
channels is further strengthened.
10. The third set of questions relates to the case
between NDTV and Barkha Dutt on the one side and Shri Chaitanya Kunte, a
private blogger, on the other. He had to withdraw certain observations made by
him in his blog post regarding the way Barkha covered the terrorist strikes in
Mumbai. Both NDTV and Barkha felt that Shri Kunte’s observations tended to be
criminally defamatory and tarnish her professional reputation by seeking to
disseminate an insinuation that some of the deaths in the strikes could be
attributed to the way Barkha covered the incident from the spot.
11. Many Netizens feel that the SC’s observations
have vindicated those of Shri Kunte and hence the NDTV and Barkha now owe an
apology to him for insisting on the
deletion of his blog post. I do not agree with this contention on the basis of
my reading of the SC’s observations. As already pointed out by me, the
observations relate to the coverage by the TV channels as a whole and not to the
specific coverage of any individual channel or reporter.
12. It would be untenable to project the
observations as amounting to an exoneration of the alleged criminal defamation
by Shri Kunte. Some of the criticisms made by Shri Kunte in his blog post were
also made by some of us, including this writer, but we voiced our criticism in
a professionally objective manner without trying to use it as a stick to beat
any TV channel or reporter with.
13. The last set of questions relate to the
relatives of the victims of the terrorist strikes. In other democratic
countries, after a historic judgement of this nature in a terrorism-related
case, the immediate focus of the channels would have been on the relatives of
the victims--- How do they feel? Do they think justice has been done? What is
their attitude towards the terrorist who contributed to the brutal deaths of
their relatives? These are some of the questions that would have been addressed
abroad and should have been addressed in our TV debates.
14. Ever since my participation on behalf of the
Government of India in the International Summit on Terrorism in Madrid in
March,2005, I have written a number of articles and delivered speeches drawing attention to the lack of victim activism in India which, in my
view, has contributed to the way terrorism is handled by the Government and the
media.
15. I will give three instances of the difference
that victim activism can make to the quality and effectiveness of
counter-terrorism:
( a ). In 1988, a Pan Am aircraft from the US
carrying US passengers going to Europe for spending the Christmas with their
families was blown up off Lockerbie on the Irish coast. During the enquiries,
it came out that one of the US agencies had been in receipt of information
warning of the likelihood of a terrorist strike against US nationals travelling
to Europe for Christmas. The agency alerted all airline companies, but it did
not share the information with the public. The relatives of the victims took up
the stand that if they had known that such an information existed, they would
have advised their relatives not to travel to Europe for X’Mas. The US
Government practice of issuing terrorism advisories to the public came into
vogue since then.
( b ). After the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US,
the relatives of many of the victims joined together, attended the hearings of
the Congressional enquiry and saw to it that the recommendations for
strengthening the intelligence and counter-terrorism capabilities were
implemented.
( c ). After the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai,
the relatives of the US and Israeli nationals killed filed a suit for damages
against Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence in a US court.
16. it is important for the relatives of the
victims of the 26/11 strikes to activate themselves in order to see whether the
sins of commission and omission pointed out by the SC could be linked to the
coverage of any individual channel and if so, whether, it could be sued for damages.
They should also agitate against politicians who stand in the way of strengthening
our counter-terrorism capabilities due to their political agenda.
17.Unless and until the media is made to realise
that it may have to pay heavily for any irresponsible coverage and unless and
until the politicians are made to realise that their political future will
depend on the interest evinced by them in strengthening our counter-terrorism
capabilities, things will not improve. Activism by relatives of victims has an
important role to play in this. (30-8-12)
(The writer
is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate
of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter @SORBONNE75)
