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From the media coverage of Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra’s wedding, to who attended Isha Ambani’s wedding, is India’s media too obsessed with celebrity weddings? That’s the question we’ll answer on today’s episode of the Big Story podcast.
Joining me on this podcast are senior entertainment journalists Naomi Datta and Udita Jhunjhunwala.
Let’s start by taking a look at some of the moments that made us ask, is the media going too far in their attempt to cover this wedding?
Ranveer and Deepika’s wedding dominated headlines on both television and digital news media.
Or distant ambient audio of the guests cheering for #DeepVeer.
A photo of a concrete wall.
A video of a parking lot at the wedding venue in Italy.
Isha Ambani and Anand Piramal’s wedding is still splashed across the news space with details of everything from who performed at the wedding to who attended and what they ate, going viral.
So are they overdoing it? Udita Jhunjhunwala thinks not.
When the first photo of the newlywed Deepika and Ranveer was shared on Instagram, it crossed a million likes in 23 minutes. This kind of celebrity hysteria is intensified by social media constantly fuelling our need to know. Naomi says that it’s simply human nature.
“What's wrong with that? This is our royalty. We watched Meghan Markle's wedding sitting in India. I have friends in Switzerland asking me to send them photos of the Ambani wedding. I mean there's nothing wrong in that, right?” adds Udita Jhunjhunwala.
But should the media be prioritising celebrity weddings over more important news? Both Naomi and Udita uniformly agreed that this was something they would never be okay with.
Now the media has a responsibility to the people. But in contrast to this, what happens, when news media goes out of its way to cater to people’s demands for their dose of celebrity culture? Like Deepika and Ranveer’s wedding for example.
Social media is certainly a MASSIVE player in the celebrity wedding game. If social media didn’t exist, would we look at celebrity weddings differently?
Maybe not.
Maybe the media is obsessing over celebrity weddings too much. But as long as there’s demand for it, there will be supply. But at what cost? That’s the question India’s media has to ask itself.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)
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