First, I hope you're okay, as is everyone you know.
Watching the coverage online for hours now, it strikes me that what we need more than anything else is the ability to respond to crises like this in an intelligent and organized way. With all these news reports of people having conversations with guests trapped inside the hotels coming in, I can't help wondering why no one seems to have thought of blocking communication in and out of the attack sites. If guests hiding in their rooms can call people on the outside, then presumably so can the attackers, which means they have both ready access to all information being publicly broadcast and the ability to coordinate with their fellow criminals in and around the city. It also means they have an unparalleled ability to spread disinformation (how do we know, for instance, that some of the reports coming in are not from the terrorists themselves?). I have to think this is a bad idea.
It's a particularly bad idea because it seems to me that most media channels are too busy trying to sensationalize the news to bother thinking through the consequences of what they're saying. It's not just that much of the coverage seems to be designed to amplify the general hysteria and panic, it's also that watching journalists describe what the police are doing or report on who is still trapped inside the hotels, I find myself wondering whether anyone's considered that at least some of that information might be helping the attackers.
Look, criminal acts like today's attacks are not going to go away. No matter what party is in power (and today's events probably made it more likely that will be the BJP - a pity), no matter how many civil liberties we suspend or how close to a police state we move, no matter how many arbitrary security procedures we put in place, this will happen again. What we can, and should, do is be better prepared for the next time it happens, so we can respond to it intelligently, instead of adopting what, from my admittedly distant perspective, looks suspiciously like the headless chicken approach.
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2 comments:
Yes,true...media as usual is looking for sensation...its hopeless to expect anything from them in such mattewrs..its also a war of'BREAKING ' news..
it should have been the people who wrer cordinating and managing tis operation...
But at te end of day my eart goes to all those NSG guys.They trully did a remarkable job,by any standards...saved no less than half a dozen hundred people ....
if only our other parts of te democracy performed even half as as good as these guys.
I beleive media has a very crucial role to play as the sentiments of the people are involved. They should facilitate right discussions so that the pressure is in the right direction.
The NSG have done a commendable jobe in smoking out the terrorist and now we have to focus on a bigger cause, i.e. to minimise and avoid such attacks by having stringent policies and also making right diplomatic moves internationally.
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