During the Mumbai, India, terror attacks, local television journalists were very cautious about what they did and did not report. In a brief essay, explain why Indian reporters engaged in substantial self-censorship of the news they reported on the attacks.

What will be an ideal response?

There is a good discussion of this case study on pages 426–427. The central argument is that freedom to report for television news channels is a relatively recent right for Indian journalists, and they did not want to risk jeopardizing those rights by upsetting the government. Journalists were also concerned about triggering a panic with unsubstantiated reports of a bomb threat in a large, public area.