December 5th, 2008
My Interview with CNN International Correspondents on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attack
Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!
I was interviewed on CNN International Correspondents earlier in the week for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attack.
Last week’s Mumbai coverage was non-stop. From the moment the news broke that attackers had practically laid siege to the city, the airwaves were crackling and the internet hopping with eyewitness reports, seasoned journalists and just about anybody who had any kind of grasp as to what was going on there.
Now that it’s over– the siege that is– not the long and painful aftermath, the re-examination of the coverage of Mumbai and its impact is well underway.
Citizen journalism took a big leap forward for mankind during Mumbai with news networks sometimes getting their information first-hand from the online community.
How far was traditional news media challenged during the siege by bloggers not bound by the rules and restrictions governing ‘established’ journalism? To what extent were hostages’ lives put in danger by the plethora of specific information in the public domain? And to what extent were the Indian authorities responsible for this by not putting cordons around the extreme perimeters of the hotels and other flashpoints?
To discuss all this, we speak to three seasoned journalists and bloggers; in London, Vijay Dutt, bureau chief of the Hundustan Times joins me in studio. Media consultant Roy Wadia joins us via webcam from Mumbai and from Washington, blogger Gaurav Mishra examines the role of the citizen journalist in telling this story.
CNN had also done a live Skype interview with me on November 27th. I’ll post the video clip for that interview once I find it.
