9/11 to 26/11- The Creation of News spectacles

A case study of the ‘The Mumbai terror Attack 2008’

Dr. Sabina Kidwai

Associate Professor

AJKMCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi-110024

Abstract

The turn of the Century has seen the growth of the media with a multiplicity of platforms. This

has brought about its own changes in the nature and delivery of new. News Spectacles have

become a way of reportage specially with the increasing terror attacks and natural disasters.

The paper looks at the creation of a News spectacle on Indian TV Channels using the Mumbai

Attack of 2008 as the case study. This, in real terms was the first News Spectacle in India as

the attack played out in front of the Television cameras for over 60 hours inspired by the media

frenzy which plagued USA after the terror attack of 9/11. Many issues are raised by the

coverage of this event, the constant use of symbolic images, the use of the present to talk about

the past and predict the future, and the prejudice which dominated when profiling a minority

community in India. Most importantly the visual display and emphasis given to the authenticity

of the image shook the foundation of ethical journalism. Questioning authenticity which we

often do now about Television News was missing in the year 2008.

Keywords: Muslim, terrorism, Mumbai attack, Spectacle, News, 26/11

Introduction

The increasing live broadcast at the turn of the century have added the element of a media

spectacle to any dramatic event, be it a terrorist attack or a War. The concept of the "society of

the spectacle" developed by French theorist Guy Debord and his comrades in the Situationist

International has had a major impact on a variety of contemporary theories of society and

culture. For Debord, spectacle "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena".

"When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and

effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle has a tendency to make one see the

world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly),

naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other

epochs…."1 (Debard 2013)

For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium

war" which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -

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- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative practice. Debord’s concept

of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in

submissively consuming spectacles, one is estranged from actively producing one's life.

However many scholars have refuted Debord totalizing effect of the spectacle. They feel that

the politics of the spectacle is far more ambiguous and unstable, subject to multiple

interpretations, and generate ambiguous and often unanticipated effects.

Douglas Kellner in Triumph of the spectacle talks about how “Media culture itself proliferates

ever more technologically sophisticated spectacles to seize audiences and augment their power

and profit….. New multimedia that synthesize forms of radio, film, TV news and

entertainment, and the mushrooming domain of cyberspace, become spectacles of

technoculture, generating expanding sites of information and entertainment, while intensifying

the spectacle-form of media culture. Political and social life is also shaped more and more by

media spectacle…. Social and political conflicts are increasingly played out on the screens of

media culture, which display spectacles like sensational murder cases, terrorist bombings,

celebrity and political sex scandals, and the explosive violence of everyday life.” 2 (Kellner

2013)

Douglas Kellner referring to the September 113 attacks on the U.S. talks about the relationship

between media spectacles of terror and the strategy of Islamic Jihadism that employs

spectacular media events to promote its agenda. A strategy also used by the U.S. administration

to promote U.S. military power and geopolitical ends, as is evident in the Gulf war of 1990-

1991, the Afghanistan war of fall 2001, and the Iraq war of 2003. “The 9/11 terror spectacle

unfolded in a city that was one of the most media saturated in the world and that played out a

deadly drama live on television. The images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center

towers and their collapse were broadcast repeatedly, as if repetition were necessary to master

a highly traumatic event. The spectacle conveyed the message that the U.S. was vulnerable to

terror attack, that terrorists could create great harm, and that anyone at anytime could be subject

to a violent terror attack, even in Fortress America. Suddenly, the vulnerability and anxiety

suffered by many people throughout the world was also deeply experienced by U.S. citizens,

in some cases for the first time.”4

A similar situation was perceived in India when the “Mumbai Attack” happened in 2008. A

news spectacle which came to be one of first terror attacks in Indian which was visually

photographed and played out on the screens for many years to come. But the attack happened

in the background of a changing India, an India in which we saw the secular fabric of the

country being gradually eroded by the constant surfacing of conflicting religious identities. The

80’s saw these conflicts enter the secular public sphere, while the 90’s saw the take over of

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this sphere by religious sectarian forces. The turn of the century also witnessed the emergence

new media technologies, and television news, making all issues into public debates. The

camera does not lie, the visual truth is the final truth, and that media coverage is ‘objective’,

were the bylines used by all Indian news channels to promote their stories. In these troubled

and conflicting times, images had come to acquire their own space and power. As identities

became more polarized, images and texts in the media also become more defined. One effect

of this news framework has been the perspective within which minorities, presented as ordinary

members of society has become increasingly overshadowed by a news perspective in which

they are presented as a problem. The Indian press has reported events around minorities

especially Muslims by taking them as an isolated community excluded from the mainstream of

society. Much of these biases have been drawn from the belief that Muslims all over the world

unite, loyal to their religion and community and not the nations they live in. Unfortunately the

bias and prejudice which dominated the United states of America in 9/11 came to dominate the

India television news channels in 2008 . Further there was already an increasing trend that

Television channels came to be owned by large corporates. Any perspective they adopted in

delivering a news story on terror attacks got played across all the platforms they owned. This

could vary from the TV channel to the monthly magazine to newspapers. A trend which had

started then and is now consolidated into some corporates controlling multiple channels in

different language and belonging to different region. Thus a spectacle was easier to play out as

it could be highlighted across platforms.

During the September 9/11 attack and in the period immediately after, a complex relationship

has developed between Media and terrorism. Dr John Huxford in “Surveillance Witnessing and

Spectatorship: The News and the War of Images”5 feels that today the image is as much a

weapon as a bullet or a bomb, with news serving as an effective delivery system. "In a world

of instant media, the signifier has become perhaps even more potent an instrument of war than

the acts it signifies. From the collapse of the twin towers to stories of Iraqi prisoner abuse and

terrorist executions, our newspapers, television screens and computer monitors have been filled

with images of the horrific and the grotesque”.

The Mumbai Attack 2008

The 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks (often referred to as November 26th or 26/11 or India’s

9/11) was a series of more than ten attacks by armed gunmen in Mumbai by the Lashkar-e-

Taiba said to be allegedly sponsored by the Pakistani ISI. Over 174 people were killed and

308 were wounded. In brief the terror attack was carried out by trained gunmen who landed on

the shores of Mumbai spreading throughout the city targeting public spaces. After attacking

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and Leopold Café, the terrorists took hostages in two

hotels Taj Mahal Palace and Oberoi Trident Hotels and Nariman House (a Chabad Lubavitch

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Jewish Centre) . After a 2 day siege by the NSG commandoes, all the 9 attackers were killed

and the hostages rescued. (29th November 2008). Ajmal Kasab the lone surviving was arrested

and put on trial. Three important officers of the Anti Terrorist squad lost their lives. After a

trial, Ajmal Kasab was hanged on 21st November 2012. The study below was undertaken with

a detailed viewing of the private channels like Headline Today (India Today), NDTV, Aaj Tak,

CNN IBN, IBN7, Times Now and India TV. The private channels were chosen for the study

as it is often believed that they are far more independent in their reportage and not subject to

prejudice and bias.

The Mumbai attack was a landmark in the coming of age of live coverage of terrorist attacks

in India. The Indian channels reported each and every detail of the attack and it was like a

spectacle mediated to the audiences. “Witnessing trauma in urban spaces through live coverage

and instant updates constructs trauma as a space of global spectacle where trauma in urbanity

has become a television genre that constructs cities as vulnerable targets for both terror and

spectacle. The anti-Western and anti-Jewish sentiments of the attackers in Mumbai again

brought to fore the vulnerabilities of an interconnected world where chaos and carnage can

explode without warning in urban cities and spaces of spatial power.”6 (Ibrahim 2009)

The audiences were able to watch a minute by minute attack on their Television screens. The

Liveness of News today is a key shaper in the relationship between television and terror as it

is this which conveys to us the immediacy of the event, and makes us a part of the ongoing

tragedy, almost making us a witness to the event but also mediating the event for us.

The 60 hour siege in Mumbai ranging from 26 to 28th of November 2008, was followed by a

year long reporting by the channels. All channels used montages with dramatic headlines and

titles, and a visually aggressive style of reportage. All channels played out the terror attack like

a spectacle. The 24X7 coverage of the 60 hour seige threw up certain images which in years to

come became the iconic images to mark the Mumbai attack. All channels ran programmes

investigating the attack and how was it planned. Speculative theories started far much before

actual proof was found about the identities of the attackers. Once the identity of the attackers

was known speculations, communal hatred and anti Pakistan rhetoric took the centre stage.

Each channel carried out its own coverage of the spectacle, displaying its views through

graphics, montages and striking headlines as well as embedding itself into the event being

played out on the screen. The News Channel Aaj Tak called the attack “11/26 ‘Sabsa bada

atanki hamla’ (the biggest terrorist attack)”, the CNN IBN channel called its coverage “War

on Mumbai” while the Times Now called it “Mumbai under Seige”, NDTV called it “Warzone

Mumbai” and Headlines Today said it was “India’s 9/11 Mumbai’s date with terror”. The

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principal images of the coverage and montage were of Taj hotel burning, the car running at

night, the CST station burning, fire shots from windows, people running, visuals of the three

slain officers - Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte, and Vijay Salaskar. The captioning of the

montages played the attack out as a War against the Nation. It was an attack on India like 9/11

was an attack on the U.S. This also heightened the feeling that the attackers were the same,

‘young Muslim men brain washed into the Jihadist ideology’.

The spectaculisation of the attack was evident in the 24X7 coverage, the excited reports,

speculative theories, scenes mixed with terror date and timelines, the voices of the victims,

defence experts, war experts, terrorism experts, and the channels own investigations. And of

course the terrorists whose every movement, every photograph, every action guided the process

of the attack. The burning dome of the Taj Hotel became one of the iconic image to identify

the 26/11 Mumbai attack and this was projected across channels in different hues and colours.

The constant emphasis of 26/11 being India’s 9/11 sought to bring this image at par with the

flaming Twin towers. “The uncomfortable truth is that television journalism especially -- with

its penchant for the visually exciting and the dramatic -- is inevitably attracted to scenes that

create spectatorship, a fact that the media-savvy terrorist of the 21st century knows full well.

This was graphically demonstrated by the endless repetition of the twin towers image in the

weeks that followed 9/11. Such images failed to function as surveillance, since no new

information was supplied in the repetition. Nor could they be justified easily in terms of

witnessing, since the moment of history had been experienced and had passed. Yet the visual

stimulation of spectatorship remained, and could be re-experienced, in all its fascination and

terror, with each repetition” (Huxford 2004). In the case of the Mumbai Attack the image of

the burning Taj Mahal Palace Hotel dome, the images of the armed terrorists continued to be

symbolic of the attack even today.

The set of the anchors plays a major role in placing the channel within the event itself. Visual

display of images with high tech graphics and corporate like presentations almost structured an

event to the needs of the channel and its campaign. Each channel by its sheer studio setup

asserted ownership of the event. The event was almost brought to the studio, making the

channel the medium of communicating to the audience. The anchors worked as the embedded

war journalists reporting from the site twisting every information in accordance with their

ideological belief. They all claimed that they were the first with the news, getting the audience

right, current and objective news. Building on fears of the past, the present was used to predict

an even more dangerous future. This became particularly true after the actual attack was over

and terrorist were identified as being Pakistani in origin. Most reporters in the initial phase of

attack were so mesmerized by the burning image of Taj Hotel that they forget to look at the

tragic death of people at the CST station. In fact once the siege ended and the terrorists were

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killed many channels ran stories on the destruction of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and how the

rich and famous had lived here. The historicity of the building took over the actual death of the

people. Many celebrities were called on air to voice their views on the luxurious hotel and its

fine dining.

“The Indian media was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering

barricades of "India shining" and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms

of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish center. We're told that one of these hotels

is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice

that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving

obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants

they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box

on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza

company, I think) said, "Hungry, kya?" ("Hungry eh?"). It, then, with the best of intentions I'm

sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan

and Somalia.” (Roy 2008)7

The Look of the young terrorist was another image which was played out again and again on

all channels. The fact that the young men were disguised to appear as middle class young boys

was used to emphasize the deviousness of ‘young Muslim Men’ in fooling the ’innocent

believing common man’. The channel Star News ran a program which decided to show us the

face of Terrorism – The first face is described as a young smart boy, in his bag he carries the

”Mauth ka saman” (Luggage of Death) and in his hand he carries the deadliest gun. He wear

“kafi thaila wala pant” (Pant with many pocket), he looks like a tourist but is actually the

messenger of Death, “yeh lagta hai salani but hai yeh Yamdoot”8. CNN IBN ran a program

titled “Face of terror in their 20’s carrying automatic weapons”. The reporters in Aaj Tak

talked about how Kasab is just 21 years old, his skin colour is fair. At the time of the attack he

was wearing a blue coloured designer T shirt and cargo pants. He was wearing these clothes so

that he would look like a young rich boy. “Look at his hands he is carrying an AK 47, on his

back he carries the luggage of destruction and if you look at his eyes they are vicious, evil and

full of hatred. He has the look of a wolf. Terrorism has made Kasab a man hater a maniacal

killer. The moment he sees a human being he starts killing. When you look at them they are

well dressed aware of the ways of the world, their hair is well cut, they belong to our modern

world.”. 9 The use of CCTV footage was also a consistent factor in the months after attack as

each channel tried to track down the route and process of the attack. In fact here it is important

to mention that the tragic death of three officers was replayed by all channels with attempts at

recreation of the events. But no new information about their death was revealed except that

they were gunned down by the terrorist Ajmal Kasab. The important part of this ongoing

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spectacle was that the information we had as audiences was still the same even though we

watched the action for many months after the actual attack.

The portrayal of these terrorists was also significant in the wake of the tension which had been

built up over the period of 2007 and 2008 when a group Indian Mujahideen had surfaced

claiming responsibility for the attacks in various cities of India in 2007. The arrests of many

young men had already built up the prejudice that most terrorist today were ‘young educated

Muslim men’. The TV reports had extensively profiled some of the arrested men, so the 26/11

attackers were quickly identified as young and Muslim and subsequently the Pakistani tag was

attached. More importantly after the Mumbai attack the suspicion of young Muslim men

became even more pronounced. All channels while carrying out the live coverages also carried

out investigations into the possibilities of insiders having helped in making the attack possible.

This helped in casting a large net of suspicion on the Muslim community in Mumbai. A city

which has already seen its share of terror attacks, with a large floating migrant population, a

city which absorbs the migrant but also rejects them simultaneously. It is also city with a large

underworld.

Each channel embedded itself into the story by highlighting the stories of victims. The victims

not only communicated to the channel but the channel became the means of communication

between loved ones. In fact since a minute by minute coverages was being done by the news

channels, that often the strategies adopted by the NSG were exposed and the handlers were

actually using the Indian channels to monitor the Attack. One speculation always remained that

the over reporting had made the terrorist kill some of the hostages in Nariman house in panic,

as the NSG commandoes carried out the evacuation process.

All channels started their own campaigns to assert ‘loyalty to the nation’, to reflect their

sympathy and concern for the victims, to represent the citizen’s voice against terror. One of

the most popular campaign was the NDTV campaign “In Memory”10 and was symbolized by

a flame. The campaign montage used a song from the film Aamir. “Ghardisho mai rehti

guzarti, zindigaiya hai kitne, in mai se ek hai teri meri apni, eh khuda khar kare, eh sa anjaan

jaha, ek muskarata chodh chala wakat se pehle yeh jaahan. Ek Lau is taarah kyu bughi mera

maula, ek lau zindagi ke”. (Life goes through many cycles and in one of them is yours and my

story. God please protect us, as we see this young man leave this world much before his time.

Why should a flame of life die so easily, Why God.) The song sought to evoke the tragedy of

terrorism which wipes out life. Ironically the film Aamir is about a liberal Muslim who gets

caught in a terrorist plot and finally gives up his own life rather than execute the attack. The

channel in support of the victims uses a song which mourns the death of the innocent but also

mourns the death of the liberal voice specially the liberal Muslim voice. The campaign added

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a huge emotional appeal to the War against Terror. The musical tribute ‘In memory’ brought

together singers from all over the country who paid their homage to the innocents who died in

the attack. The onscreen were carried out into the field through candle lit marches with the title

“Enough is enough”11 in which people came together to demand security from the government.

Debates and discussions on the channel allowed many of the elite to vent their feelings about

the politicians and their inefficiency. Often they also became the stage for many prejudices to

surface. The views of the people were highlighted through programmes like ‘We the People’–

Anatomy of Anger – Can civil society bring real change? Is the elite to disconnected from

reality? 12 All this did help in allowing people to bring out their anger. It also brought a clear

divide between the elite and the common man. The channel made attempts to bridge this gap

but very often the celebrities did take over the discussions.

Headlines Today carried out a campaign “War on Terror”13 drawing from the American War

on terror. It sought to adopt a more hard hitting coverage based on facts and the need for hard

action by the government. Emotions were charged with the need for War, war against an enemy

and that every citizen must be a part of this war on terror. No opinion contrary to the

‘nationalistic one’ was acceptable. The campaign involved largely discussions with war experts

and policy makers and sought to engage the youth through debates. The image of the clenched

fist sought to portray the message that we as Indians are ready to fight. It appealed to all Indians

to unite against a common enemy ‘terrorism’. In the weeks to come this acquired a clear face

’Muslim men and Pakistan’. The spectacle continued to play out for long time on this channel

with the discovery of what the channel called ‘Terror Tapes’ which were recordings of the

conversation between the terrorist and their handlers. Ultimately it died down to be replaced

by the trial of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab. Tapes Don’t Lie – ‘Voices of terror’

is the ticker which runs through the programme. The anchor introduces the programme as to

how the Pak handlers advice terrorist on how to kill efficiently. The anchor talks about how

the terrorist were not only well trained but they had also been taught how to engage with the

media.14 The tapes played back as an HT exclusive sought to build panic and fear. The anchor

says “the masters smile across the border as the terrorist spill the blood of innocent victims and

celebrate massacre unleashed”.

Ajmal Kasab the lone surviving terrorist also became the symbol the Mumbai attack. In the

months that followed his trail, his confessions, his vacillations, his anger, his appeal were all

reported in great detail by the media. He came to symbolize all that was bad about Pakistan.

He became the face of Pakistan, the face of terrorism. After the initial photographs of the two

terrorist at CST, Kasab after his arrest, image of Kasab in court room became the base visual

material for all the television reports. The trail of Kasab was a spectacle played out in the

theater of television with all anchors, experts and ‘aam admi’ asking for his death. Kasab ”the

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lone surviving terrorist”’ of 26/11 became the most important face on television. As Kasab’s

confessions hit the television screen all channels started exploring his Pakistani links. The

channels also went into their own analysis of the plans which were hatched in Pakistan and

how the terrorists are being protected. The limited visuals of Kasab were supplemented by

sketched out sequences which always showed the Pakistani handlers in clerical dress. A clear

visual of a religious Muslim is communicated through all the recreations. A fanatical ideology

can only be propagated by a religious looking Muslim. So to some extent inspite of the debates

about representation and stereotypes, many channels went back to using the Muslim cleric as

the best representative of the fundamentalist Muslim. All channels carried their basic Terror

timeline and constant repetition sought to be a reminder of those horrific 60 hours of siege.

Each channel gave its own repetition of the siege, somewhere reclaiming the incident to the

exclusivity of its own channel. The events of 26/11 had many story tellers each claiming the

story to itself and adding its own version of investigation and debate. Confessions of Kasab

were closely linked with views on Pakistan and the channels launched a clear media blitz

against Pakistan, with all channels anticipating a War. The important point is that often the

attack on Pakistan and on Kashmir inevitably aggravates prejudices against local Muslims. The

spectacle of the trial allowed Kasab to play out all the various ideological motivations he felt

for the cause. In our desire to prove Pakistan wrong, the channels gave immense publicity to

views of the LeT through Kasab. The motives behind the attack were a little unclear. The

attack was audious and sought to create chaos and fear was evident but the actual motive could

not be focused on. The actual motives varied from wanting to take foreign guest hostage, to

highlighting the Kashmir agenda, to revenging the ill treatment of Muslims, to killing the Jews

missionaries in Nariman House, these can however only be speculated on and all channels

indulged in these speculations. The Headlines Today story focused on Kashmir as the main

agenda, an agenda which justified the involvement of Pakistan ISI and terrorist organizations

like the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Much of this reading was true but it was based on confessions of

Ajmal Kasab supplied by the police recordings. The use of police recordings of confessions of

terrorists was not a new device, throughout 2007 we saw that many of the channels like Aaj

tak, IBN 7 India TV carried programmes which re-enacted the transcripts of confessions of

arrested terrorists. In many cases there were no actual interviews with the arrested person but

their voice and person was re-enacted . Even narco tests were shown as re-enactments .

Pakistan was a major media story post 26/11 and an even bigger story for the channels were

the Taliban and the emergence of Talibanised terrorism in Pakistan. “Pakistan was a failed

State’. “the Taliban army was reaching Islamabad” were common statement on all the

television channels. It is in the projection of the Taliban we see the coming together of the

media and terrorism in an unprecedented scale. The media in its condemnation of Pakistan gave

the Taliban unprecedented publicity. However the Indian media in its keenness to blame

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Pakistan, acts of barbarism were shown with continuous repetition, used to creating a horror of

the advancing Taliban. A threat which was also endangering India as Pakistan was not really

stopping this advancing army and was insidiously using it against India. The chief conspirator

in the attacks on India was the ISI, the intelligence agency of Pakistan. Most of these reports

on the rise of the Taliban appeared in the period after the Mumbai attack December 2008 to

May 2009.

The importance of the Liveness of News was that it made the whole event into an ongoing live

drama which the audiences could watch from the sidelines, sympathise and emotionally relate

with from the safety of their homes. It also made it evident that news could be manipulated

and the channel could clearly decide what should be reported and how. In fact what got left out

indicated the journalistic bias of the channel. The playing out of events in front of television

screens allowed the News channels to not only give a detailed visual coverage but also make a

spectacle of the events which followed. In the following months this kind of spectaculisation

of events can be seen in the coverage of the attack on the Cricket team in Pakistan which got

titled Cricket vs Terror, the Rise of the Taliban in Pakistan, the killing of Osama Bin Laden

etc.

Today we have got so used to News spectacles on channels that they have become the norm,

every story is played out like a spectacle. It may a terror attack or a natural disaster specially if

it has the eye catching visuals of the actual event being caught on camera. This has led to a

gradual dehumanization of news ignoring all the accepted norms of decent and fair coverage.

Showing murder and mayhem on channels is no longer barred and its play happens across

platforms forcing audiences to be part of the news spectacles and become fixated with its

progress. But equally we find that audiences have an increasing short term memory allowing

stories to disappear from TV screens. Channels today survive on negativity and no spectacle

sells more than a negative one. Today the efforts to be unbiased is not even made and the

spectacle has become the major device to manipulate audiences.

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Screen Shots of the some of the images of News stories referenced in the Article

CAPTIONING THE ATTACK

ICONIC IMAGES OF THE TAJ HOTEL

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AAJ TAK - FACES OF THE TERRORISTS

SETS FOR THE ANCHORS

1 Deobard Guy quoted in KellnerDouglasMedia Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle,

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/mediaculturetriumphspcetacle.pdf, accessed last on 10.4.2013,p

2

2 Kellner Douglas, Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle,

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/mediaculturetriumphspcetacle.pdf, accessed on 2.4.2013, p 1

3 9/11 – The September 11 attacks (often referred to as 9/11)nwere a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by

the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

Four passenger airliners which had departed from airports in the northeastern United States bound for California

were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight

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175, crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in Lower

Manhattan. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

4 Kellner Douglas, 9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation: A Critique of Jihadist and Bush Media

Politics

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/911terrorspectaclemedia.pdf, accessed on 2.4.2013p 3

5 Huxford Dr John, Surveillance Witnessing and spectatorship: The news and the war of Images,

http://www.media-ecology.org/publications/MEAproceedings/v5/Huxford05.pdf, Villanova University

Proceeding of the Media Ecology association Volume 5, 2004, p 1,last accessed 1.4.2013

6 Ibrahim Yasmin, City Under Siege: Narrating Mumbai Through Non Stop Capture, Culture Unbound, Vol 1, 2009, p 386, http://www.cultureunbound.cp.liu.sc d 7 Roy Arundhati, The Monster In The Mirror, Outlook, Concurrents.org

8 27th Nov 2008 Star News 9 Aaj Tak 27th Nov 2008

10 NDTV 13 Dec 2008

11 NDTV 30th Nov 2008

12 NDTV 14th Dec 2008

13 Headlines Today 22 Dec 2008

14 Headlines Today 28th Feb 2009

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Mukt Shabd Journal

Volume IX, Issue VII, JULY/2020

ISSN NO : 2347-3150

Page No : 2667