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| World's biggest
scandals were mostly matters of the flesh. Photofeature » |
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Few lives have run through
such a varied gamut in so short a time and been so eventful. Protima
Bedi. The almost-show-all model to the show-all streaker whose bare-dare
blitz on the Bombay roads and the Juhu beach remains unmatched till
date. No wonder then that the mere mention of her name brings salacious
smiles on faces.
India's original flower child, she flaunted an I-care-a-damn attitude
and sluiced through double standards and pseudo-morality in society.
For the teen gang, she became an icon of the 1970s.
There was practically nothing she did not try in just 39 years - an
open marriage with Kabir Bedi, relationships with artists, politicians,
fought off ugly memories of a childhood rape and the hurt of being
the unwanted child. Then the immediate and extreme switch to an Odissi
danseuse who toiled with her own hands to create Nrityagram.
In her own words: "I did what I bloody well felt like doing."
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| Tabloids: In the line of fire |
| You are here: HindustanTimes
» HTTabloid Home |
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A tabloid should have at least
one sex scandal in it. We are a nation of gossipmongers, and love
interfering in the private lives of people.
Unfortunately, there are no such stories in India. They (journalists)
are afraid of litigation and the other kinds of pressures the stories
bring. For instance, long back in my column in Illustrated weekly,
I had spoken of the case where Veer Savarkar is charged with sodomy.
Everyone speaks of him as a great patriot and a Hindu bigot but
no one talks on this aspect. I was immediately hauled up by the
police and arrested after pressure was exerted by the Shiv Sena...
Khushwant Singh, Journalist,
columnist and author.
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 There
is nothing called tabloid journalism in India. There
is good journalism or bad journalism. Tabloid journalism
is just something freaky made up by journalists"-
Pritish Nandy, Journalist, former editor Illustrated
Weekly, film producer
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"In
the age of Internet, MTV and Channel V, gossip journalism
has got other harbours. Selling a tabloid therefore,
has got all the more tougher"
Ramesh Gupta,
Publisher of the Sun in India
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Indian journalism
is terrified of discussing the private lives of politicians, especially because
of stringent consequences from the latter.
To save their skin, the media has shifted its attention to people who are less
harmless, celebrities, models and film stars.
Tabloids such as Blitz and Current,
which were doing fairly well during 1970s, had to shut down largely because
they were ahead of their time. People just couldn't appreciate the openness.
Faced with tough competition, national dailies
started incorporating the elements of tabloids to survive. This reduced the
scope of tabloid
Amita Malik, Film critic and media analyst.
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