The news media has been a repeat offender of the invasion of privacy, something it tries to brush aside by saying that it’s just doing its job. That’s not ethical. There is a line between “collecting information” and prying and it’s not very difficult to figure out where that needs to be drawn. Here are instances when the media completely failed at it.
1. Recently, a media person focused their camera on Anushka Sharma and her daughter Vamika Kohli when the two were watching Virat Kohli play from the stands. Vamika’s face was captured despite repeated requests for privacy from the couple, and her pictures started going viral very soon, which is something internet users need to sit and think about.
2. Britney Spears became a mother in her mid-twenties and the media did not give her one moment of rest or privacy. In one particularly distressing incident, the paparazzi followed her as she sat inside a restaurant and cried with her months-old son in her arms.
As per reports, she asked the restaurant owners if she could hide but they refused.
3. Princes Diana literally died trying to run away from media, and one would’ve thought that the endlessly unfortunate accident would change the way news is produced and consumed. But no, that did not happen.
4. Rhea Chakraborty was dealing with the death of her partner, Sushant Singh Rajput, when the media did not just accuse her of being the reason behind his suicide, but also hounded her like vultures whenever she stepped out.
5. The wedding of Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza was heavily politicised and the media was outside the tennis player’s home at all times to capture whatever they could. They’d surround the house with zoom lenses and take pictures of the couple and their families who were inside.
6. Before the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming, pictures of Tom Holland and Zendaya kissing inside a car started doing rounds all over the internet. But no one thought, how the actors would feel about it. Addressing the pictures, Tom later said:
One of the downsides of our fame is that privacy isn’t really in our control anymore, and a moment that you think is between two people that love each other very much is now a moment that is shared with the entire world. I’ve always been really adamant to keep my private life private, because I share so much of my life with the world anyway…(it felt like we were) sort of felt robbed of our privacy.
7. During Sidharth Shukla’s funeral, the media focused cameras inside the car window as an inconsolable Shehnaz Gill cried. Some camerapersons even took pictures inside the crematorium. The photos are still on the internet.
Speaking on the matter, Shefali Jariwala noted:
Sidharth was a very private person, as so is his mother; making such a spectacle of his passing was really disturbing to see. It is not something that he would have wanted.
8. Back in 2017, A UK court had ordered the French magazine Closer to pay €100,000 to Kate Middleton and Prince William for publishing topless pictures of the Duchess taken without her knowledge.
A statement from the couple’s spokesperson adjudged the incident as “grotesque and totally unjustifiable” while adding “the incident is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to the Duke and Duchess for being so”.
Absolutely disgraceful.