Today, on the 26th of November 2022, India remembers the 14th anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack in Mumbai, carried out by Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba when 10 Pakistani terrorists wreaked havoc on India’s financial capital. 175 people (including 9 terrorists) died in the terror attack and over 300 people were left injured.
The terror attack, which lasted 3 days, was being shown live on our TV screens by the Indian news channels. We could get live updates on the hostage situation that was developing during the course of this terror attack. Later on, we learned that it wasn’t just us watching the minute-by-minute update of the hostage situation, but the handlers of terrorists sitting in Pakistan as well.
In fact, the Supreme Court, in its judgement in Md. Ajmal Md. Amir Kasab vs the State Of Maharashtra on 29 August 2012, had dedicated an entire section and several pages to the conduct of the media and how it endangered operations during the 26/11 terror attack. The highest court in India pulled no punches while describing how the media aided terrorists during the course of this terror attack.
One of the journalists covering this terror attack from the location was NDTV’s Barkha Dutt. While several people criticised media in general, and quite a few criticised Ms. Dutt’s coverage specifically, one post from a blogger by the name of Chaitanya Kunte really attracted the wrath of Dutt.
In a blog post titled ‘Shoddy Journalism’, Kunte criticised Barkha Dutt’s reporting during the 26/11 terror attack. Kunte had given two specific incidents accusing Dutt of being insensitive and irresponsible. In one incident he claimed that Dutt had caught hold of a man who had just ran out of the hotel and interviewed him live. In the interview, she apparently made the man disclose where his wife was hiding in the hotel, which arguably made her vulnerable to being located by the terrorists.
In another incident, a security officer is supposed to have told Dutt that the Oberoi Trident was free of hostages but Dutt had apparently called up a top manager at the Oberoi who contradicted the security officer.
While this blog post by Kunte went viral, even during the time when social media wasn’t as much of a part of everyone’s daily life as it is now, it was suddenly deleted in January 2009. Instead, Kunte tendered an unconditional apology to Dutt. The wording of the apology seemed to convey that Kunte had received a legal notice of defamation from Dutt and NDTV.
The Supreme Court judgement years later vindicated Kunte and what he had written about the media coverage, but by then, the post, the blog, and even Kunte were nowhere to be found online. The threat of the court case seemed to have made him say goodbye to the internet forever, at least with his real name.
Later on, in an interview with Newslaundry’s Madhu Trehan, Barkha Dutt did acknowledge that she had sent a legal notice to Kunte and she didn’t regret it. During the interview, Barkha admitted that perhaps in hindsight journalists made mistakes during the Mumbai siege. However, she did add quickly that when they ‘realised’, from the second day they started deferring visuals of live coverage of the attacks by 15 minutes. She upped her defence by saying that the media wasn’t aware that the handlers of the terrorists were monitoring news channels.
