impact-IMRS SURVEY
How sensitive, factual and pure has the media coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks been?

The news industry was thrown into the eye of scrutiny last fortnight, after Mumbai faced one of the worst terror attacks in history. Public debate shot off stronger than ever, as the media is still trying to make sense of all the feedback, criticism, and uproar. impact commissioned IMRS Advisory Pvt Ltd to find out how people among advertising, marketing and the media industry itself have interpreted this marathon coverage. The survey was conducted among 105 professionals from Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai.

The survey exposes that most people are becoming increasingly sceptical about the media. Criticism of the news media has only sprung up higher over the last couple of days, with people blogging, forming protest groups, using the medium of the digital space and Internet for activism, and intensifying the debate over what the media’s role and responsibility is in such times. In the midst of all this, the IMRS survey’s findings reiterate that this mood of “fighting back” is here to stay for a while. Large numbers of participants voted that journalists are not sensitive enough; the government should regulate the media more; that the temporary blackout of news channels was justified—and also view an interview with a terrorist as an act of glorifying him. But the survey also throws light on how most people still trust private channels for authentic information more than they trust government-owned channels like Doordarshan and the All India Radio. It also shows that there is still faith in the Indian news media; only 36% of the participants said that they trust international news from channels like BBC and CNN more than that from the Indian news media.

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In times of crises, OSM evolves to be
An emerging, yet effective bet

By Rishi Vora

A true player is one that scores when the chips are down. And Mahendra Singh Dhoni is one name that you might want to put your money on. Replicate this in the media landscape and try getting a name. Stumped? Thought so. The answer doesn’t lie with an agency or an individual. Instead it’s a medium that’s the winner.The Online Social Media… quite obvious isn’t it? When the entire city of Mumbai was under siege the past week, it was the Social Media that gave out timely updates on the developments to millions of citizens even before television news channels did.

What better source than the holed-up victims themselves to tell you what’s happening inside the terror invaded places? Media experts see this as a never before response from the Social Media users. Not that the medium has picked up now. It saw its early days some five years back when Internet in India had just begun to grow. It’s risen in stature as and when crises have hit the nation, be it the Mumbai floods or the terror attacks. The difference today is that Social Media has come of age and has advanced on many quarters.

The medium became larger than life as and when a twitter update was given, as and when a blogger decided to voice his opinion on the terror attacks, and as and when an amateurish photographer uploaded the pictures of terror on a Flickr or a Facebook or any other desi social networking site. impact spoke to experts and practitioners of social media and got their views on the emerging, yet a very powerful and effective medium.

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