Media must give Ranbir Kapoor-Katrina Kaif and others some room

I work in an industry that survives on exactly what I’m writing against. Almost, that is. Sensation is the buzz word in media, as far as the current day is concerned. And when it has Bollywood’s almost-most-noticed almost-couple at the centre, the media is quite expected to lose all semblances of sense and sensibility. And that is where one can’t help but wonder – exactly how much interference in a star’s personal life is too much interference?

Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif’s new residence in Bandra has been the rallying point of a whirlwind in the media, which just refuses to die down. What the actors do or not do in their own lives sure is their business – but to a certain extent, that very business drives the business of the entire entertainment news industry, too. So, when Ranbir recently lost his cool at a TV channel crew outside his house, he received many brickbats and much criticism for his conduct. And there has been the occasional empathiser, too. Kapoor apparently chased the crew for a while, and used the best expletives in his repertory while abusing them. One might not go all the way and endorse this act, but one needs to understand his predicament, too. And no, I’m not being paid a single penny by Ranbir for this self-shaming of sorts. And he’s not my favourite actor, either.

Ranbir, minus his star avatar, is just another human being. If one puts himself/herself in his shoes for a moment, one will understand the situation he is in. Not going into his personal life; but talking about just the paparazzi factor here. There’s apparently a group of photo-journalists, photographers and TV channels who have stationed themselves, stationary, outside the actor’s house. Every movement of the two – Ranbir and Katrina – are being filmed, tracked, scanned for that one exclusive picture that might change the fate of one of the photo-capturers. The ever-elusive Ranbir and Katrina, together, in a single frame.

None of us will forget Katrina’s long letter to the media after her bikini-clad photos with Ranbir were splashed all across all forms of media. None of us will forget Ranbir asking a journalist at a press con to "mind his own business". However, what we, in our quest to capture that one life-altering photo, will forget, is the fact that people – even stars, for that matter – deserve some sort of normal-people treatment.

I remember attending an event, right after we, the media, went ballistic about the "Priyanka Chopra-Shah Rukh Khan affair", where Priyanka took the pains to answer a few questions about "that phase" of her life. Something that she’d then said has stayed with me for long now. “You (the media) tend to forget that I too am a girl, at the end of the day. You are a girl. Would you like to be asked, 'Did you sleep with that colleague last night?' the moment you wake up? Or be questioned, 'Where did you spend last night?' I am a girl like you. Rumours, scandals, baseless gossips hurt me exactly how they hurt you; they make me feel exactly as bad as they would make you feel,” she’d said. That time, I’d actually stepped a bit back and thought about the girl Priyanka Chopra, not the actor Priyanka Chopra.

People – and yes, I mean my professional compatriots here – tend to ignore the person altogether while launching scathing attacks on stars. Yes, we do survive on gossip, and sensationalism is the key word in any functional, well-to-do entertainment portal or tabloid or magazine or channel of the day. But there are certain ethical limits that one needs to remind themselves to not cross. While Ranbir’s slip will be dissected and debated for days to come now – till the photo lands in front of us – one needs to remember that for us, the media, the news is stale with the next big story. For the ones at the receiving end of it – the consumers, and the ones at the originating end of it – the stars, the story is forever.

In Notting Hill, when a semi-clad Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) is clicked by hundreds of waiting cameras outside Will Thacker’s (Hugh Grant) house, there’s that memorable dialogue between the two:

Will: “Well, you know...it's just one day. Today's papers will all have been thrown away tomorrow.”

Anna: “You really don't get it. This story gets filed. Every time anyone writes anything about me, they'll dig up these photos. Newspapers last forever. I'll regret this forever.”

And Notting Hill was 1999. Before the internet conquered our daily lives. In 2014, if you’re a person with some amount of public presence and happen to be a star; every photo, every article, every mistake-or-not that you’ve ever committed, will haunt you forever. While some choose to ignore the barrage of gossip that they give birth to, or not (not, in most cases), there are others who are majorly impacted by the same. Being a pachyderm in the film industry might be mandatory, given the current age, but it’s a task that comes with time. Maybe we should respect that, if not their personal lives.