Pritpal Kaur
It’s more than a week since Brussels was rocked with three bomb blasts at it’s airport and metro. 32 people died and over 300 injured. Three suicide bombers too were killed. Another bomb was found at the airport and further tragedy was reverted in time.
All precautionary measures were taken. Emergency declared. People were asked to resort to social media to get information abut their loved ones to avoid congestion to telephone lines. Airport was closed etc.
We as the civilized people of the world totally condemn any such acts of terrorism. At the same time we feel the need to learn some lessons from the western media on how to handle tragedies of this amount.
In the wake of Brussels blasts When I surfed my television to reach BBC or CNN or Al Jazeera, I did not see any crazy-looking, over- zealous screaming reporters on the ground, trying hard to gather bites or vox pops. I did not see the gory pictures of bleeding and crying people being carried to the ambulances. Or for that matter I did not see any reporters waiting outside the hospitals like hawks to get footage of injured being wheeled in from the ambulances.
All I could see on my television screen carrying the news of the tragedy were roads being cleared of private cars, being helped by police as well as civilians. People willingly changing the routes of their private vehicles to make room for ambulances and police vehicles to smooth their operations. I hardly saw any reporters running around, carrying their mikes and shoving it into tragedy struck people.
All one could listen to was a frightened child’s wails as the passengers were taken off from the tragedy struck metro and being taken to a safe place through the metro tunnel. All I could listen to was the wailing of that one frightened child and none of the camera persons had dared to take a shot of the poor child who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I wonder what our media would have been doing during such tragedy. I am certain they would’ve been hounding every possible person on the roads. They would've been outside all the hospitals waiting with their cameras and mikes ready. They would've been all over the tunnel trying to capture the harassed commuters' faces as closely as possible. And some of them might have had the audacity to shove their mikes into the hapless victim’s faces while asking them "How are you feeling?"
No wonder when the similar tragedy hit our next door neighbor’s doorstep and Lahore witnessed a bomb blast on Easter Sunday, killing at least 70 people, mostly women and children and 300 injured, ‘Pakistan electronic media regulatory authority’ in Islamabad issued a press release suggesting that media is expected to cover these kinds of tragedies with professional responsibility .
The advisory clearly stated, "Pakistani media needs to follow the example of professional of Brussels attacks by international media rather than following the footsteps of Indian media that is driven by crass commercialization."
Coming this from a country that some of us claim to be backward in many aspects of modernization, is an alarming sign. We need to understand the origin of this. Media professionals in particular and civil society in general, both.
Do we need to witness more about our media’s conduct under such grave situations before we raise our voices loud and clear? Are we not in a mature enough state to exercise restrain over our childish and immature conduct while dealing with sensitive issues?
We sure need to understand that there are certain constraints that we need to exercise and respect under certain situations. We do need to understand that news is not just about taking down facts and reporting them. We have to take into account the nature of the news and then decide the ways to depart it.
We, 'the news people' are the people on this side of the fence. The fence that separates the information from the ‘news people’ and the civil society. Once the news gatherers receive the news, it’s their responsibility to impart it on the other side of the fence to the public, in a manner that neither jeopardize the dignity of the victims nor encroaches upon the right to information of the public on the other side of the fence. In nutshell we are the fence sitters and it’s high time we learn to behave like responsible ones.
