Media blackout of Pathankot attack a lesson learned from 26/11

Late into the night of November 26, 2008 when ten terrorists were well into their slaughter of Mumbai’s hapless civilians, one of their handlers remotely steering the massacre from a control room in Karachi had an epiphany. The handler learned of several potential high-profile hostages. “There are three ministers and secretary of the cabinet in your hotel,” he told terrorists rampaging through the Taj Mahal hotel. “We don’t know in which room…find those persons and you will get anything you want from India…”

And just how did this handler sitting nearly a thousand kilometres away, know this? Just hours before, several Indian TV channels broadcast phone-ins with MPs trapped in the Taj. Speaking with victims trapped in a terrorist-infested hotel might have sounded like journalistic due diligence in the din of explosions and gunfire. Broadcasting the conversation live, however, amounted to culpable homicide.

As the first group of hotel guests tip-toed out of their sanctuary at the Chambers in the early hours of November 27, they were set upon by the four terrorists. Fifteen guests and hotel staff were gunned down. The slaughter stopped only when Indian Navy’s Marine Commandos arrived and engaged terrorists in a firefight. The bloody link between the telecast and the civilian deaths was deduced only after intercepts of the conversation were publicised by the Mumbai police weeks after the attacks. Which possibly explained the egregious lapse on November 28-- TV cameras broadcast live footage of an IAF helicopter air dropping commandos on to Nariman House.

The experienced terrorist handlers in Karachi were possibly delighted at this windfall. Their control room echoing with the breathless coverage from Indian TV stations, they precisely instructed how the terrorists were to face the NSG commandos rapelling from the helicopters. One commando, Havaldar Gajender Singh, was killed as he entered a room fortified by the terrorists. TV channels had, once again, unwittingly turned into CCTV cameras for terrorists.

That terrorists use the media to achieve their primary objective of waging psychological warfare is a truism and researchers have weighed in on how live coverage has impacted on their actions.

Jerrold Post, author of The Mind of a Terrorist, calls terrorism “a kind of psychological warfare waged through the media.” Which means that while we know terrorists influence the media, media coverage also influences terrorists. In a 2013 interview to buzzfeed.com, Post cites an early instance of this: the 1977 takeover of the B’nai B’rith International headquarters in Washington, DC — when media outlets began reporting that some hostages had escaped and were sending food and water to the other hostages. The terrorists, Post says, saw the reports and recaptured the hostages.

In the fast-moving 24x7 news environment of the 21st century when easily available tools like satellite phones allow masterminds to remotely control strikes and assess the impact of their actions, restrained coverage of ongoing operations are critical. Mumbai 26/11 was an example of unrestrained coverage actually worsening a crisis and reason why the set of self-regulation guidelines released by India’s News Broadcasters Association on December 18, 2008, completely banned live TV coverage of terrorist attacks.

News channels could not reveal the number of hostages or their identity during an ongoing terrorist attack nor show the victims. The import of these guidelines, largely followed by the media since 26/11 have made timely briefings by government spokespersons that much more important. This has not happened so far. The initial hours of the Pathankot terror attack were followed by deafening silence from the defence ministry, later, a premature ‘mission accomplished’ announcement from Home Minister Rajnath Singh, followed by a revolving door of spokespersons from the home ministry and the IAF.

This was an eerie repeat of the three-day long 26/11 attacks in Mumbai where multiple officials produced an echo chamber of facts and narratives. When defence minister Manohar Parrikar finally briefed the media at the Pathankot air force station on January 5, it was over three days after the attack had started.