The Wardman Wire

I’m not going to cover the Mumbai Massacre in detail as news as it’s being done far better virtually everywhere else, but one thing I do wonder: I’m not sure why I’m seeing apparently live pictures of an assault to free hostages on satellite TV.

Even back in 1982, at the Iranian Embassy siege in London, there were concerns that the gunmen would be able to see the detail of the assault coming due to live TV coverage, and the actual assault was over in minutes:

However news teams were camped outside the embassy. A unit from the British news organisation ITN, using recently-introduced ENG camera equipment, managed to establish a viewpoint at the rear of the embassy. It was images from this vantage point that showed the SAS raid on the building live on television after their correspondent had been ‘tipped off’. However the SAS insisted on a short time-delay between the live events and their broadcast in case the terrorists were watching the broadcasts.

Clearly the situation is massively different due to the larger scale and continuing nature of the attack, but it’s one of the things that I’d like to know about. One possibility is that there is a delay introduced - but I will be interested to hear the detail.

Or are any casualties that result part of the collateral damage of the “continuous” and “instant” news reporting?

Sky even have a Live Blog of it all.