A darling of the paparazzi and already a ‘viral’ social media celebrity, anything Janhvi Kapoor puts up is bound to become widely covered. Which is why it was hardly surprising, when many ‘news organisations’ picked up a ‘throwback picture’ that Kapoor had shared on her profile.
The picture showed Kapoor (as a child) at a birthday party, dressed as a clown and the caption read – Lesser known fact: I was Christopher Nolan’s first choice for The Joker, had to decline for #Dhadak.
It was just another day in Instagram and the world of ‘valuable SEO star kids’ till people started taking that joke from an ‘Instagram story’ (which is not even a permanent post) and turned it into 200-word ‘stories’ with clickbait headlines like these:
Only a few days ago, Arjun Kapoor called out the journalistic practises of several organisations who reported on trolls comments left on a Janhavi Kapoor picture. Elder brother being elder brother, he obviously didn’t appreciate a website who ‘wrote’ something about Janhavi Kapoor’s ‘sexy dress’.
It’s bad enough that ‘news desks’ of an organisation are mining stories out of Janhvi Kapoor’s Instagram stories while other organisations follow, but it’s even more shameful when they sink to the lowest depths of clickbait, to ‘sell’ the story.
As the actor rightly pointed out, this was calling out yellow journalism that doesn’t shy away from invading anyone’s privacy, objectifying anyone and anything, doesn’t think twice before commodifying everyone between Taimur Ali Khan to Ishaan Khatter… to Janhvi Kapoor.
Should the media houses and their editors police themselves, about such ‘stories’? How much lower do we plan on stooping any way?
