By Najam Gilani, TwoCircles.net,
In the event of terrorist attack on Mumbai we all were made witness to those horrific live scenes—-Courtesy news channels and its reporters. It was the kind of coverage which has not been witness in the decade old private industry of Indian electronic media. It generated more of flak and less of praise for Journalists/Reporters/Broadcasters. It also raised some serious question which needs some serious answers.
In the backdrop of all this, Newswatch conducted an online Survey between 3-6 Decembers. Sample size was 9,906 in which 21 News Channels were selected for the purpose and 16 questions were put to respondent to rate them on scale of 1-5 dealing with perceived negativity aspects of the coverage of Mumbai terror attacks by news and business channels.
A finding of the survey was startling. For instance; one time star of electronic journalism Barkha dutt of NDTV (Group Editor. English News) was voted as the worst/theatrical reporter/anchor with 46% of the vote, followed by Arnab Goswami (Editor in chief. Times Now) (Earlier he was part of NDTV) Rajdeep Chaurasia (Aaj Tak) and Rajdeep Sardesai (Editor in Chief. CNN-IBN) (Earlier he was also part of NDTV team)
Lesser known name in the field of Electronic journalism Arup Ghosh and Shireen of channel News X got voted as best reporter/anchor from amongst the list of giants of electronic journalism like Barkha dutt,Rajdeep Sardesai,Arnab Gosawami,Sreenivasan Jain,Suhasini Haider
Hindi News channel Aaj Tak, who termed itself as Sarvshest ( Leading) got 96% vote in affirmative on the question of “Were TV channels theatrical in terms of dramatization of event/gesticulation by reporters/anchors and BBC was voted as least theatrical along with DoorDardshan news
Aajtak got the lead again with 97% of vote in affirmative on the question of “Did Channels go overboard with their colorful and loaded language”, followed by Zee news, India TV, Times Now, and NDTV 24X7
India TV (Its Chairman and Editor in Chief is Rajat Sharma of Janalat ki Adalat fame) got the lead by getting 95 % of vote on the question of trivializing the issue of terrorism during discussion by including more non-experts.
On the question of “Did TV channels communalize the situation by calling them Muslims/Islamic/Islamist terrorists”,UTVi,Star News,India TV took the lead with 83% of vote each,followed by Zee News,IBN 7,CNBC TV 18
ZEE Busines, Sahara Samay and News X got the highest percentage(98) of vote, followed by Times Now, Star News, NDTV Profit, NDTV India and India TV, on the question of ” Did TV channels over emphasized the Pakistan angle while the operation were still on “,
Shobha de got the 56% of vote in the category of “celebrities who didn’t deserve to be there on TV on event of Mumbai attack
According to 97% of the respondent’s the high points of the coverage was round the clock extensive coverage. 74 % of the respondents said that lowest point of coverage was its theatrical presentation
73% voted in affirmative on the question of “Are TV news channels goading the government to go to war with Pakistan”
On the question of channels speculation on the number of terrorists and the steps being taken to tackle them Zee news came first With 86% respondents voting for it, followed by Aaj Tak,India TV,Zee Business,Star News,Sahara Samay,Headlines Today, NDTV India and NDTV 24X 7.Doordarshan and BBC were voted as least speculative
On the question of unverified news report Zee News again got the most negative response with 98% of the respondents saying Yes followed by Sahara Samay,Zee Business,Star News,IBN 7, India TV, NDTV India, NDTV 24X 7. BBC and Doordarshan came last in this category
“Did TV channels came across as taking credit for their exclusive coverage”, here again Aaj Tak maintained the lead along with India TV News channel