Dear Ranveer Singh,
It’s all about you. Not Padmavati or its eclectic filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Nor the film’s prestigious PR agency whose thankless task it is to keep the media doing its job away from the troubled film and its harried maker. It’s always been about you. And as professional media persons and also we unblushingly admit Ranveer Singh fans, if the unpublished first poster showcasing your swashbuckling image as the plundering and philandering Sultan Allaudin Khilji from Padmavati fell in our eager and willing hands yesterday – what were we expected to do with it? Certainly not sit on it selfishly. We did what any self-respecting print, digital or electronic media person would do. Rushed it to your fans with a triumphant ‘You Saw It Here First’ claim!
And why not? Ours is as competitive and cutthroat an industry as is yours. And just like an actor is only as good as the last hit he delivered, so is a journalist only as good as his last scoop. If Peeping Moon.com had not done it, somebody else would have. This is like Fastest Finger First on Amitabh Bachchan’s Kaun Banega Crorepati. The early bird gets the worm. And this is Ranveer Singh we are talking about – the hottest property in Bollywood. In the media, the importance of a story is measured by column centimeters in print and seconds on prime time. If it bleeds it leads. Your poster came to town as a special jacket on the front page of a leading daily. That’s because, the nation wants to know what Ranveer Singh will look like as Allaudin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s epic drama Padmavati. We shared the look online and on social media before anybody else could. And we wrote a handsome copy to complement the image.
Did what we do amount to piracy? Or something worse than that? We honestly, and sincerely, don’t think so. We are the media. Our job is to report. Unless the contents is of a sensitive nature, like an election’s results, and is under embargo. Which means no media can publish a word or picture about it until a certain date and time. That was not the case with your Allaudin Khilji poster from Padmavati. Nobody told us we weren’t to upload it and why. And that it was meant for public consumption only at a preordained hour. Or that it was the exclusive right of that leading daily to publish the poster first – which we would have never accepted anyway. We got the poster, we took it to your fans. And all that we are guilty of is beating you to releasing it first on social media! But come on, Ranveer Singh’s fan clubs are only going to lap up this first look – whether it comes from you or from us – and trends on the internet show that they are still gleefully doing that only. It’s only the look that matters to your fans. Not who shared it first.
