Terror Reporting

Saturday strike of terror in Ahmedabad and Surat is completing a fortnight this Saturday. There is no clue to the tragedy that left 50 plus persons dead in Ahmedabad and scores injured. Police and media both are full of speculative stories that are doing only one thing. Both are creating terror. Police is picking people on the assumption that such a massive operation must have local support. Like the in the case of investigation of a burglary, police is detaining people suspected of involvement of communal violence in the past and gives the impression of getting some kind of lead. Media reports this event as if persons picked up are the culprit!Yesterday, police released sketch of suspects involved in the blasts. Those who know the basics of crime investigation know very well how reliable or unreliable these sketches can be. Today all newspapers released sketches. Headline of one newspaper can summarise the situation. It says these are the people who destructed your city. It is an established fact that Gujarat police has not caught any terrorist on the basis of sketch.A lot is happening on different fronts. But if we take the simplest thing- the death toll, there is no correct figure about this. Figures range from 50 to 55. Can't we have even this little information correct. If any reporter had tried to find the right figure, he would have got a scoop. Yes. There is a discrepancy in the initial figure of death toll and the number of post mortems. The day government spokesperson Jay Narayan Vyas had given the figure of 51, the death toll according to PMs was only 46. No dead body waiting for PM.This shows our contempt for facts. I would say noun. In the absence of right homework, we depend on adjectives and adverbs and all fancy words. The result is obvious. We create terror in the mind space (this hi sounding word simply means mind!) of the reader or viewer. The result is evident. Both, administration and media is suffering from serious credibility crisis. The solution is simple. Be honest to ourselves.