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Are we peeping into cleavages for news now?

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Prerna Koul Mishra
Prerna Koul MishraSep 22, 2014 | 14:03

Are we peeping into cleavages for news now?

Deepika Padukone

What you see depends on the prism through which you are looking. This realisation stands inspired by the discussions, deliberations and primarily the dissection of the Deepika Padukone cleavage story in the media corridors. Quite metaphorically, the opinion is split in the middle.

The debate has created quite a word cloud which, with all the heft it carries, is bursting out at the social seams - objectification, feminism, personal liberty, infringement of privacy etc.

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Compared to this my thoughts haven't even reached a stage of refinement on the issue. My concerns around the debate are basic, not for or against, but just about my understanding and our acceptance of what can pass the acid test of being publishable news. In the media school, we were taught a thumb rule: Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog makes news.

So I would be more judgmental on the basic premise of the story. A beautiful woman flashing cleavage can titillate pulp fiction followers but does it show respect to what we can sell as NEWS?

After all the story was not a critique on how the female protagonist has come of age in Indian contemporary cinema and how she can take the lead and thereafter lie back to watch the night sky, flashing her beautiful bodyline in a bra. Or that the song "Shake your Bootiya" is a "call to attention" song and it is rocking young and old bottoms like.

So to my many friends, who feel Deepika Padukone has made a song and dance out of an inconsequential story, I partly agree but only to the fact that the story was inconsequential. In this age of multiple idioms and issues, do we want to get to a level where cleavage makes news?

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And more importantly, the other question is to my own media industry and its working: If we are reckless with words, then who bears the brunt? To me it is not the junior-most person in the link (hope the firing bit is only a rumour). How about the news filters that should have ostensibly been institutionalised by now? Where are the checks and balances bit? It is collective responsibility (read failure) and needs to be seen as such.

And finally after the content-hungry television putting the media through the wringer, the demand pressures of earning follows in 140 characters may weigh very heavily on social media, forcing us to go awry with the quality. A clarion call for sobriety on social media, I say!

Hopefully, if we keep our eyes trained on the basic respectability of news, we may be able to take them off cleavages and crevices for eyeballs.

Last updated: September 22, 2014 | 14:03
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