DesiPundit

Vikram Sood, who was the head of India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing, blogs about the need to share information and strengthen institutions fighting terrorism. He also has some advice for the media.

Publicity is oxygen to the terrorist’s cause and he has to be starved of this. All of us, especially the media, have to ensure that in our reporting, the terrorist or his act is not lionised. The terrorist wins each time gruesome pictures reach families in their homes as they sit down to watch their favourite programmes on the box or read newspapers. The choice between what to report and how is always going to be a difficult one. Describing him as a militant instead of a terrorist is to give him respectability and calling him a fedayeen is to glorify a killer.