Ripples on the brain

I read quite a few blogs of journalists or free lancers who claim to be in the vicinity of the Mumbai blasts. They claim that either they or their fellow journalists put professional duty over personal safety by insisting on proceeding to or being in one of the areas of Mumbai blasts and reporting from there.

I must say like many others I’m not impressed. To me, there are only two important activities that can happen around the area of the blasts. Either you have gun in your hand and fight the terrorists or you help out the injured or those holed out in some way. Reporting minute by minute incidents to a person like me sitting thousands of miles apart is not helping anyone on the ground there. Having a camera or a mic and running around only obstructs everyone else going about doing their duty. Seeing Barkha Dutt roaming around the place and talking with the authority that she’s used to makes any common sensical viewer puke. It was atrocious to see these people almost insert the mics into the mouths of people who had survived the ordeal and were coming out of one of the hotels. If I were one of them, I would have slapped Barkha as I came out.

Pray some one tell me what service these reporters are doing in these times. How are they any better than the curious bystanders trying to watch the “fun”? In fact these guys are worse - they obstruct other people from discharging their duties and try to make money out of others’ miseries. I sometimes feel there should be some restrictions on journalistic freedom in our country, especially during such disasters.

And while we are in this matter, none of the 24 hour English news channels reported the Chennai flooding in any way. I saw a headline in NDTV just before the Mumbai incident happened and after that there was nothing. It makes me wonder if there’s any use for a South Indian in watching these news channels.